In Maryland, the Montgomery County School board has stripped Christmas, as well as all religious holidays, from the school calendar. The vacation days are still there, but under new names that make no religious reference. In Piedmont, Alabama, the Freedom from Religion Foundation pressured the small southern town to drop its “Keep Christ in Christmas” parade on grounds that it was unconstitutional. The bottom line: Christians need to stop alienating their secular neighbors and celebrate something more inclusive. The war on Christmas is real.
Secularist groups may be fighting it now, but Christians started the war on Christmas. In 1647, the Puritan-led parliament worked to remove Christmas, Easter, and other “holy-days” from the calendar in England. Anyone who was caught promoting these religious holidays risked serious ramifications. On May 11th, 1659, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony sought to preserve the purity of the Christian faith and the sobriety of the faithful by declaring that “whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way . . . shall pay for every such offense five shilling.”
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