The War In Christmas

Christmas as celebrated is generally removed from its context of cosmic struggle. There are, to be sure, other themes embodied in Christmas but that of struggle and conflict are rarely given the prominence the biblical text suggests. The final biblical "Christmas" account is recorded in apocalyptic style in the 12th chapter of John's Revelation. It certainly avoids anything treacly: 

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. ²She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. ³And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. ⁴... And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. ⁵She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, ⁶and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God ...¹³And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. ¹⁴But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. ¹⁵The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. ¹⁶But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. ¹⁷Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

The theme of conflict is found not only in the Apocalypse. Consider the account of Herod's slaughter of the innocents described in the chapter 2 of the Gospel of Matthew, as much part of the birth and infancy narratives as the visit of the shepherds or the magi.

The subtle effects of modernity have undercut the conflictual nature of the incarnation. The relegation of "religion" to the private sphere in the West since the 18th century limits real, honest-to-goodness conflict to the battlefield or athletic pitch. Of course, other sorts of conflict still exist in the modern world but they are (or at least should--so the cultural understanding goes) litigated, mediated, or medicated. Even my chosen field of study in the law--contracts--plays a part in this. The modern liberal-democratic order finds its second-most basic expression in commerce, not war. Profit, not honor, rules the modern heart.

Thus, those Evangelicals who decry the elite's attacks on Christmas miss the point. By buying into the reduction of the Christian faith to an expression of the private domain with only symbolic public expressions (creches, displays of the Ten Commandments, prayer in schools, etc.) most American Christians have bought into modernity's myth that conflict is to be managed. Unless the reality of the deep warfare of Christmas is brought forward, protests of the war against Christmas are little more than a sideshow.