December 18, 1997 an episode of Seinfeld aired titled "The Strike" in which George Costanza's father Frank celebrates a made-up holiday called Festivus to protest Christmas and all its attendant pressures and consumerism.
Fast forward 24-years, and I find myself encountering people at work hedging their bets when varying their holiday greetings and well-wishing. "Merry Christmas" no longer suffices. Now more than one coworker in a week's span has floated references to the "Festivus for the rest of us."
Replacing colorful lit-up ornaments-filled evergreens with an aluminum pole, or substituting feats of strength for gift-giving, or airing grievances with one another in place of reading the Christmas story. All of it is so very post-modern.
As such, I find myself sad about it rather than amused.
Enter Bradford Littlejohn at American Reformer with his essay 'Reimagining a Christian America,' published December 22, 2021. And now is as good a time as any to explore the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future where Christianity in public life is concerned.
With the loss of Christian America celebrated in too many quarters, Littlejohn's article is a breath of fresh air. Common sense should tell us if our theology no longer does that life in Christ is to be lived out publicly.
"This little light of mine," went the song. "I'm going to let it shine."
And didn't Jesus tell us to not hide our lights under a bushel, but to let them shine before all men? He did indeed.
And so we come to a more thoughtful and intentional extrapolation of that command in Jeremiah 29:7 where the exiles in Babylonian captivity are commanded to "seek the welfare of the city" in which the Providence of the Almighty has seen fit to place them.
I may differ with Littlejohn in his call to reclaim American public education for Christ. That ship has sailed, in my view, and it is time to give up on it once and for all, preferring Christian private and home education as the new institution which will revive our national religion.
All the same, Festivus is as good as any a proof of the need for us to speak to the broader culture publicly and boldly about telos again in light of God's Word.
So Merry Christmas, you filthy animals. And put away your aluminum poles and post-modernism already.
