‘Tis the season for Christian advocacy groups to come out of the woodwork defending your right not to be offended by pagans who refuse to recognize Christmas by wishing you a Merry one. Liberty Counsel just released its “Naughty and Nice” list of retailers so you can be a discriminating Christian and only spend your money where the C-word is liberally used. Focus on the Family is also helping you out by posting its annual “Christmas-friendly” shopping guide.

Ironic, isn’t it, that from its inception the Christian faith has discouraged the very thing that our consumer-oriented Christmas has become: the accumulation of possessions. Yet in its present manifestation the Christian faith is most concerned that we not spend our wealth or accumulate more stuff without someone recognizing Jesus’ birth at some point in the process. Which is more blasphemous: a retailer who refuses to wish you a “Merry Christmas” or a Christian who insists that his spending spree be blessed by attaching the name of Christ to it?

If the Wal-Mart associate fails to wish you a “Merry Christmas,” or your local municipality refuses to display a creche on the front lawn of your city hall, consider yourself among the “persecuted church.” Christian advocacy groups like Focus on the Family, Liberty Counsel, and the American Family Association stand at the ready to defend your right as a Christian NOT to be persecuted, even though the Bible clearly indicates that those who live for Christ will suffer.

But does not hearing “Merry Christmas” after you swipe your Master Card really equate to being ripped away from your family, placed in a “reeducation camp,” and tortured until you recant your faith, a scenario repeated daily in places like Viet Nam and Cambodia? Could anyone here please point me to one example of any real persecution presently being inflicted upon any Christian or group of Christians in the United States?

How about some biblical perspective from Sinclair Ferguson from his book, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel Centered Life:

I took the hand of my toddler son (it was several decades ago now) as we made our way into the local shop on the small and remote Scottish island where earlier that year I had been installed as a minister.  It was Christmas week. The store was brightly decorated and a general air of excitement was abroad.

Without warning, the conversations of the customers were brought to a halt by a questioning voice from beside me. My son’s upraised index finger pointed at a large cardboard Santa Claus. “Daddy, who is that funny-looking man?” he asked.

Amazement spread across the faces of the jostling shoppers; accusing glances were directed at me. Such shame – the minister’s son did not even recognize Santa Claus! What likelihood, then, of hearing good news in his preaching at the festive season?

Such experiences can make us bewail how the Western world gives itself over annually to its Claus-mass or commerce-mass. We celebrate a reworked pagan Saturnalia of epic proportions, one in which the only connection with the incarnation is semantic. Santa is worshipped, not the Savior; pilgrims go to the stores with credit cards, not to the manger with gifts. It is the feast of indulgence, not of the incarnation.

In the words of that great theologian John Lennon, “So, this is Christmas…?”  If it is, you can keep it.