In her Monday, Dec. 11, press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders stood before the White House podium and seal and began highlighting the work of a West Virginia church to preach āwhat the Christmas spirit and the American spirit are all about.ā
āThere will be so many acts of generosity and kindness that go unnoticed this Christmas season. And thatās okay. [That] church wasnāt looking for credit and neither are so many others. But these stories are important because they remind us what the season is all about and thatās the greatest gift of all: that a savior was born.ā
āI think Ms. Sanders might need a science lesson,ā jokes FFRF Co-President Dan Barker. āWe all know that the real reason for the season is the axial tilt of the planet.ā
Barker, a former evangelical minister who now helps lead the largest freethought organization in the country, also explained that Jesus is not the reason for the season, according to the bible itself.
āThe bible says Jesus was born in Palestine when the shepherds were in the fields with their flocks, which is not winter, and certainly not December,ā notes Barker. āSo according to the New Testament, heās not the reason for the season.ā
Ignoring axial tilt ā which causes the alternation between the longest and shortest days of sunlight ā Christians created a religious āreason for the season.ā They wanted to convert the heathens who worshipped Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, at the time of the Winter Solstice. So they assigned the birth of their savior to a time when the heathens were already celebrating to sell them on Christianity. Jesusā invented December birthday was simply a tool for proselytizing.
Sanders went on to express the White Houseās wish that the nation take time to enjoy the Christmas season. āOr however you may celebrate,ā she added as an afterthought, a sop to inclusiveness neither she nor this White House seem committed to. After all, it is President Trump who has repeatedly promised: āWeāre gonna be saying Merry Christmas.ā
āSanders should be ashamed to stand in front of a podium that belongs to We the People ā all the people ā and parrot the religious myth of a shrinking portion of Americans,ā says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
About 24 percent of the American population is nonreligious, and fully one-third are not Christian according to the latest Public Religion Research Institute study. Nearly half of millennials are not Christian.
For all of Trumpās bluster about mandating āMerry Christmas,ā he canāt even control his own household. Just this morning, his advisor and daughter Ivanka tweeted, āHappy Holidays!ā Of course, Ivanka converted to Judaism and saying āMerry Christmasā excludes non-Christians, which is why many corporations avoid the phrase.
The phrase āMerry Christmasā does not go back to the founding of our country. It was first used in the mid-1800s, long after our original motto, E Pluribus Unum (āFrom many come oneā), was composed.
āToday, when we are much more āpluribusā than before,ā Barker points out, āsaying āMerry Christmasā to an increasingly diverse country is nothing more than a contemptuous āGo to hell, non-Christians!ā A very uncharitable remark during a season of goodwill to all.ā
And Huckabee Sanders could have spotlighted the charitable work of secular Americans as well as churches. For example, FFRFās Nonbelief Relief has ā among other things ā given tens of thousands of dollars to disaster relief for hurricane victims in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. This country belongs to all of us, not just Christians.
The so-called āWar on Christmasā is fake. The real war is being waged by evangelicals who are attacking our precious American principle of religious freedom by using the power of government to force their narrow views on the rest of us.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit based in Madison, Wis., with over 30,000 members across the country. It has been working since 1978 to keep religion and government separate and educate on matters of nontheism.
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