Merry Christmas!

Graphic from NeoCon CommandCenter

According to the December 16, 2006 edition of the Washington Post, the Christian Defense Coalition is promoting "Project Nativity" as part of their effots to "take Christmas back":

"Our hope and prayer is that over the next three to four years, hundreds of nativity scenes will begin to dot the landscape of America once again," said the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. He said he hoped the temporary nativity scene on a terrace of the Capitol would serve as a "template" for similar efforts.

The project is not limited to the United States. For example, Catholic schoolteacher Kathleen Darragh has written another version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas," available through ACTA Publications in Illinois:

Writing with her schoolchildren in mind, her poem begins: "On the first day of Christmas, our true God sent to us . . . Our Saviour Baby Jesus."

"The most excited talk they have is about Santa, and I sort of thought we have to get this idea across to them that Christmas is really about Christ and keeping the Christ in Christmas," she said in a telephone interview.

"People here and people in England are saying: 'Let's not go down the American route of having a Happy Holiday. Let's say . . . this is Happy Christmas. It's not Happy Holiday.' "

The 2006 film The Nativity Story has added impetus to the idea of paying more attention to the reason for the Season:

This year, some Christians are celebrating the focus on Jesus's birth on the big screen with the recent premiere of "The Nativity Story," just one way they hope to redirect Christmas away from the North Pole and back to Bethlehem....

For Christian believers, Christmas has, of course, always been about Bethlehem and the birth of our Savior. Despite the turning of this holy day into a commercial holiday, the meaning has always remained the same, for God has promised us that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Before we get caught up in the last days of the Christmas rush, I now take this opportunity to wish all my many Christian cyberfriends, too many to name, "Merry Christmas!" May the Spirit of Christmas be in your heart today and forever.

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

[...]

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!