Is W. Running Away From Jesus At Christmas?

22 Dec, 2004 by John Hawkins

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Here we are in an overwhelmingly Christian country, celebrating a Christian holiday, and we have public schools that are petrified to let a bunch of 3rd graders sing “O Little Child of Bethlehem” at a ~~Christmas~~ holiday concert. They’re afraid that one day they’ll just be having a simple Christmas concert and the next day they’ll be besieged by lawsuit happy anti-Christian zealots who claim that singing a song about Jesus constitutes the “establishment of religion” by Congress or by furious liberals who are all riled up about “Jesusland” and pitching a fit.

Maybe that’s why Christmas feels a little different this year. In fact, it ALMOST feels like saying “Merry Christmas” to a stranger is an act of defiance…but, it’s really not. My guess is that 99.9% of the people out there, even the liberal Christophobes, aren’t going to bite your head off if you tell ’em Merry Christmas. Furthermore, I would like to see a larger number of conservatives getting a little more hyped up about defending the “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” portion of the 1st Amendment since I think that’s under assault in this country by groups like the ACLU, but that’s a topic for another post.

In this post, I wanted to take the fine folks — and I mean that, I do really like their website — at WorldNetDaily to task for being so oversensitive about this whole thing that they’re slamming George Bush just for not saying the word “Jesus” lately…no, I’m not kidding! Take a look at the start of the column …

“WASHINGTON – What’s virtually missing from the White House commemoration of Christmas this year?

Jesus.

The little baby in the manger.

The reason for the season.”

WND continues…

“While President Bush was re-elected last month in an election victory many attributed to an outpouring of support by evangelical Christians impressed with his candid outspokenness about his faith, some Americans notice the White House website lacks even a single mention of Jesus, whose birth is celebrated by hundreds of millions worldwide Dec. 25.

The official White House site proclaims this as the “Season of Merriment and Melody” – not the birth of the Savior of the world.

…Among the website’s many photographs of secular decorations is a shot of a creche, or Nativity, displayed in the East Room, but the baby Jesus is virtually invisible. “

Now, this sort of criticism might be appropriate if George Bush spent his campaign trying to appeal to Christians and then tried to distance himself from them after the election. But, as WND themselves admit in this piece, that’s not what he’s doing at all…

“At the lighting of the National Christmas Tree Dec. 2, Bush remarked: “Tonight we begin a joyous season, and the city of Washington is never more beautiful than during the holidays. At Christmas time we celebrate good tidings first announced two thousand years ago, and still a source of great joy in our world. Laura and I are always happy to join in the Pageant of Peace, and we thank you all for coming this evening.

“The season of Advent is always the season of hope,” Bush continued. “We think of the patient hope of men and women across the centuries who listened to the words of the prophets and lived in joyful expectation. We think of the hope of Mary, who welcomed God’s plan with great faith. We think of the hope of the Wise Men who set out on a long journey guided only by a slender promise traced in the stars. We are reminded of the hope that the grandest purposes of the Almighty can be found in the humblest places. And we embrace the hope that all the love and gifts that come to us in this life are the signs and symbols of even a greater love and gift that came on a holy night. The old carol speaks of a ‘thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.’ And every year at this time we feel the thrill of hope as we wait on Christmas Day.”

Bush went on to remember troops serving in foreign wars this Christmas season.

It has been noted that the Bushes’ holiday card this year includes a Scripture verse. But, again, it does not mention Jesus.

This card has a line from Psalms, 95:2: “Let us come before him with Thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”

Bush has pics of the nativity up at the website, he alluded to the birth of Jesus, he mentioned “the Almighty,” he talked about the Wise Men who arrived at Jesus’ birth, he sent out a Christmas card with a Scripture verse on it…I mean, come on, isn’t WND splitting hairs a bit here? There are a lot of fair criticisms that you can level at W, but one of them certainly isn’t that he’s running away from his Christianity…