Who Stole My Christmas

Dr. Michael L. Ford

24 December 2006

            Actually the question should not be “who stole my Christmas,” but Who Stole Our Christmas? By our, I mean everyone who wants to celebrate Christmas in its true meaning, the taking of a period of time to commemorate the entrance of the Son of God, the Savior of the World into the sin cursed place. That is actually a minority of people upon this planet. I believe it is even a minority among those who attend church.

            Twenty years ago I returned to the United States after seven years of some of the most productive time of Christian work in my life. I thought I would come back to the U.S.A. and get a spiritual recharge in the company of many dynamic preachers and feeding from great spiritual resources that had served to develop me for the work I had been doing. What I found was a spiritual deterioration generally and I was particularly saddened to see how carnal some of the institutions that had once blessed my life had become. But one bright spot I looked forward to was enjoying the things I had become used to around Christmas time.

            In television programming, I could look forward to seeing once again some great Bible based, and Hollywood tampered, movies that were regularly played that time of year. As time went on others and I would mock Ted Turner because he had no perception of what constituted a Christmas programming schedule. But there were networks that still carried Christmas programming, so it was okay. Now I have a hundred and fifty channels with no true spirit of Christmas in any of them. We can watch some of the old movies on our own CD and VHS players, but without the general distribution these things once had their limited Christian witness is no more.

            Who stole Christmas? The ACLU certainly waged a war against it. And, the courts appointed by liberal politicians have done their part. The God haters of all stripe have been busy for sure. But I am afraid in the final analysis we can give none of them the real credit for stealing Christmas. I think the real credit has to go to the majority who did nothing, who refused to cry loud and spare not each time one more thing was taken away.