The reason for the Season is not the season of Reason ... and there’s a reason!

When I was a boy growing up in Ohio, the town where I lived would put up decorations along the main drag, like every other town. They all said "Seasons Greetings." Not "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." It wouldn't have occurred to me that Christmas was being downplayed. Not in a town settled in 1787 by Methodists, who still pretty much ran the place nearly two centuries later, and not in a town where Santa Claus rode a fire truck through the streets of town on the Sunday before Christmas, handing out bags of treats to all the children.

But times have changed, or at least we think they have. In a nation where people are free to worship as they choose, an increasing number come to our shores who choose to worship as non-Christians. It comes as no surprise that Christmas has a different meaning to them, if any at all. In one example last year concerning the loss of innocence, there was a face-off of holiday billboards on each end of the Lincoln Tunnel into New York City, with an atheist billboard on the New Jersey side and a Catholic billboard on the New York side. Just listen to the clown who claimed to speak on behalf of "reason."

"Christians don't own the season." (0:40)

I don't know what that means, to "own" a time of the year. There is sufficient evidence over two millennia, that this time of year has been associated almost exclusively with the Christian holiday known as Christmas, which certainly didn't get its name from an atheist. Come to think of it, why WOULD an atheist want to own the season? It's a lot of semantic trickery, really, and for all the noise people like this made, I really don't believe there was much of a public outcry, in the form of not giving gifts on or about the 25th of this month.

Which means the atheists threw their money away on something that will change nothing.

You can't tell that to William Donohue of the Catholic League. In his defense, we should not take Christmas, never mind our Christian faith, for granted. He is absolutely right on that point, and deserves credit for putting himself in the face of ridicule to say it. Nevertheless, he comes off in interviews as a chronic whiner. This is not because of a personality defect (a factor upon which his detractors, even those who agree with him, lay entirely too much stress), but because of the modulation of his voice, which is unsuited for broadcasting or public speaking -- unless, of course, a chronic whiner is the kind of voice you are looking for. And if you are, you probably don't work in radio or television. If Donohue ever attempts his own talk radio program, someone with authority will break him the bad news. Until then, he either needs a vocal trainer, or the Catholic League needs a press secretary.

Witness also this report from The New York Daily News (via Gateway Pundit), where, in a promotion for UNICEF (a United Nations agency which obviously ran out of people to pick on), Santa Claus is depicted as a cynical old man who does not care about poor people in developing nations.

“This ain’t no Christmas gift. So, you buy this products for your friend, and all this stuff goes to poor kids? Like in Africa?” Santa asks, before skeptically examining a vaccine bottle with a magnifying glass, shaking a bottle of pills and squirting the contents of a syringe into the air.

All told, it only adds to the worry that Christmas is being threatened, and yet ...

The Faith upon which the Incarnation is built, and the Church founded by Him to spread that message, have always been under siege, and the blood of Her martyrs has been the seed-bed of an ever-growing harvest. Witness the occurrence in November of last year, at a shopping mall food court in Ontario, in Excruciatingly-Politically-Correct Canada. This wouldn't happen for Eid-ah-Adha, the Islamic "festival of sacrifice," or for Ras as-Sana al-Hijreya, the Islamic New Year. No one will pull a stunt like this for a fabricated (and, unbeknownst to many, anti-Christian) holiday like Kwanzaa. And as this is written, NORAD wasn't monitoring the skies for Hanukkah Harry.

The threat to Christmas has been greatly exaggerated, O ye of little faith! To be Christian, or more specifically, to be Catholic, is to believe that our Savior, the God-Made-Man, took the form of a slave, triumphed over Death, and sits at the right hand of God the Father. He, and He alone, is King. At the end of the day, at the end of Time itself, every nation shall yield, every knee shall bend down, and every tongue shall proclaim, that Jesus Christ is LORD! All the billboards in the world to the contrary will not change that.

And so ...

As this is published, this writer is packing for the trip to Ohio in the next week. But first, one final tribute, as preparations are also underway to celebrate the "Christ-Mass" at the Church of Saint John the Beloved in McLean, Virginia, where yours truly is First Master of Ceremonies for a Solemn High Mass at the stroke of twelve. “Gaudete! Christus est natus ex Maria Virginae!” “Rejoice! Christ is born of Mary the Virgin.”

Now, quit your damn bellyaching and crack open that eggnog already!

+    +    +

A special thanks to Alphabet Photography of Niagara Falls, Ontario, for thumbing their noses at the Human Rights Commission and orchestrating a "hate crime" disguised as a flash mob, eh? Special thanks to Robert Cooper and Chorus Niagara, The Welland Seaway Mall, and Fagan Media Group.