Christ will always be in Christmas

In last week’s column, I asked my fellow Christians not to have a heart attack if some department store employee wished them a “Happy Holiday” rather than a “Merry Christmas” because we all know from where the cha-ching of the cash registers comes: the birth of Jesus Christ.

Were it not for the birth of a Savior in Bethlehem no one would be celebrating in the deeps of the dark winter’s days. Jesus Christ brings the light into the darkness of winter. Smiles and wishes of cheer dispel the darkness of the winter and its long nights.

You see, we Christians — mostly my brothers and sisters of the faith — have a way of imbedding the Gospel wherever we go. In the darkness of what we now call the Dark Ages when it was a threatening thing to talk Christ and his glory, trade craftsmen imbedded the cross in the design of a household necessity: the common door.

You might want to stop a moment and look at the doors in your own home. I bet most of them have the cross of Christ as their design. The common six-panel door, in which the top four panels are proportioned to delineate a cross and the lower two panels represent the open Bible, was popular in colonial America and is often called a Colonial door, or Christian door, or cross-and-Bible door.

Yet, it was not birthed in the colonial period of America but in the Dark Ages of Europe. It was a witnessing device, quiet and unassuming, but still powerful.

I think it amusing that most builders and contractors who order and install the doors have little awareness that they are putting crosses all around one’s house.

The point I am making is simple: the Gospel of Jesus Christ will find its expression without me having a hissy fit about whether or not someone says, “Merry Christmas.” The Gospel is so strong that the big newspaper in Atlanta thought it compelling to put the words to favorite Christmas carols on the front of their religion page.

“What?” you say. “The Atlanta Journal-Constitution tipping its hat to Christianity?” Yep.

There will always be Christ in Christmas regardless who wishes what.