BETWEEN THE LINES

THE POWER OF CHRISTMAS

Exclusive: Joseph Farah notes it's much too late for secularists to ban holiday

When I was a kid, Christmas was just about the biggest deal in the whole wide world.

As Jean Shepherd, the late screenwriter of “A Christmas Story,” would say, the entire annual calendar of kid-dom revolved around this holiday

We’d start thinking about it in September. By Thanksgiving, there was a feeling of imminent inevitability. Hysteria began to set in by Dec. 1.

We didn’t just celebrate Christmas. Christmas Eve was nearly as big a deal. And we began a countdown in our household many days before that. Dec. 23, for instance, would be the eve of Christmas Eve. Dec. 22 was the eve of the eve of Christmas Eve, and so on.

With all the attacks on Christmas in recent years, I wonder how much of the fun and delight of Christmas has been robbed from our kids.

But of course, the attacks are not really directed at Christmas at all. Christmas is only a target of the secular jihadis of the American Civil Liberties Union and their co-conspirators at Americans United for Separation of Church and State; their ultimate goal is destroying what Christmas represents.

They remind me of the terrorists in the Middle East who say they want a state of their own. What they really want is to destroy other states. Because they haven’t been able to achieve their goal in an all-out assault, they settle for getting there piece by piece.

The real target is not Christmas. It’s Christianity. That’s where the real battle lines are being drawn.

And we should expect this. It’s just what Jesus told us to expect:

“Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20).

A talk show host asked me once whether I “fear” this persecution. I tried to explain that I don’t fear it; I welcome it. Because unless we pay a price for our belief in Jesus, our faith has not really been tested; we’re not really following in his footsteps.

Think about this: Jesus came to earth as a little, helpless baby.

He knew that even his very birth would result in worldly authorities attempting to hunt him down and slay him in an effort to prevent him from doing what he had come to earth to do – preach the Word, go to the Cross to atone for the sins of mankind and be resurrected.

Many Christians have considered the agony Jesus went through in the garden at Gethsemane and the humiliation and torture he endured leading to Calvary. But how many of us have considered the decision Jesus made before that – to come into the world as a helpless little infant?

That’s faith. That’s love. That’s Jesus.

Experience more of Joseph Farah’s no-nonsense truth-telling in his books, audio and video products, featured in the WND Superstore

What his detractors don’t get is that the battle is over. The war is already won. It is finished.

You can invent new holidays to try to marginalize Christmas. You can change the words of “Silent Night.” You can tell little kids they can’t say “merry Christmas” in school. You can do all kinds of things to try to get mankind to forget about Jesus.

But all it gets you, ultimately, is more company in hell.

Another reporter asked me: Who is winning the battle over Christmas?

The battle was won a long time ago, about 2,000 years ago, when a little baby was born in Bethlehem, a God-man who would become the savior of the world. Kings tried to kill him shortly after his birth. Priests marveled at his knowledge when he was but a boy. He turned the world upside down with his teachings. He healed the sick and the lame. He raised people from the dead.

To this day, we measure time itself by his coming – not just kid-dom but the whole world.

In another week or so, we will turn the page on the calendar and celebrate the new year – 2016. It isn’t because it will have been 2,016 years since the beginning of the world. It isn’t because it will have been 2,016 years since the beginning of history. It’s because it’s been about 2,016 years since the birth of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor, the King of Kings.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/the-power-of-christmas/#62ZiXuOQ0ZfIf4wd.99