The only reason my true love didn’t give me a partridge in a pear tree this morning is because my starter wife of 42 years knows full well that I’ll just shoot the bird and cut down the tree for firewood to cook it.
Yes, the first day of Christmas. That’s today.
We’ve all heard the goofy carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” But a lot of folks, and most in Utah, mistake the 12 days for a countdown to Christmas day. Nope. “The Twelve Days of Christmas” carol is named after the holy Christian season that begins December 25 and concludes 12 days later on Jan. 5. My sermon on the fifth day in Christmastide will be on the first Sunday in Christmas (December 30). And we’ll still be singing carols.
But I don’t expect to get five gold rings before going to work that day.
Sadly, in our materialistic culture the month of December is mostly about the annual commercialized frenzy to shop ‘til you drop for Christmas gifts. However, if you roll the clock back a century and a half, you’d find most people having to pause to think about which day in December was Christmas Day. You see, Congress didn’t even get around to declaring Christmas Day a holiday until 1870.
Speaking of Congress, the History Channel, which has an inclination to make up history rather than reporting it, once broadcast a program about Christmas in America that included the statement: “On December 25, 1789, the United States Congress sat in session and continued to stay open on Christmas Day for most of the next 67 years.” Similar falsehoods about Congress and Christmas are repeated by the usual suspects in the ACLU and other anti-Christmas nutcases.
The journals of Congress and its successor, the Congressional Record, indicate that on Christmas Day in 1797 the Senate assembled, established a quorum, and immediately adjourned. On Christmas day 1802 the House met and actually conducted some business. Those were the only two days in the history of the United States Congress that meetings were convened on December 25th.
That’s twice, a far cry from the persistent anti-Christmas myth of over 130 House and Senate sessions on Christmas day.
The anti-Christmas movement is gradually succeeding in replacing the greeting, “Merry Christmas,” with the bland and inaccurate, “Happy Holidays.” Of course that will have to change when the secularist Scrooges figure out that “holiday” means “holy-day.”
But then, the anti-Christmas folks aren’t the brightest bulbs on the tree. Two weeks ago I watched a typical example of the ludicrous proposition that it’s all right to celebrate Christmas just as long as you don’t mention Christ.
NBC’s Today Show was broadcasting a special Christmas discussion between the members of four-person panel made up of Matt Lauer, Star Jones Donny Deutsch, and NBC’s medical editor, Nancy Snyderman. When Star Jones affirmed her Christ-centered focus on Christmas, Nancy Snyderman contradicted her with the incredible statement: “I don’t like the religion part. I think religion is what mucks the whole thing up!” Unable to restrain her fecklessness, a few seconds later Nancy argued that those who celebrate a religious Christmas are the most stressed about the holiday.
Apparently Nancy was included to lower the collective IQ of the panel.
And what does Nancy Snyderman believe does not muck Christmas up and helps the holiday to be less stressful? Nancy finds the true meaning of Christmas in green trees and yuletide. No kidding. One has to wonder if she also gets her seasonal jollies over Yule goats (who draw the chariot for the god Thor) or Yule pigs (Christmas ham).
Hopefully Nancy’s bizarre attitudes don’t apply to the religious foundations of Easter, Passover, or Ramadan.
I wonder what those who wage war on Christmas Day would do if Christians began to celebrate all 12 days?
Well, I’m going to double check to see if we’re having partridge for Christmas dinner.
And a very merry Christmas to you all!
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