DANIEL S. writes:

I came across some interesting and illuminating lines from the traditionalist Catholic philosopher Rev. James Schall in his article about Christmas:

Modern culture has made great efforts to obfuscate our understanding of Christmas. It has evaporated the heart of the event while pretending to keep its trappings. The White House has decided to call its decorative pines “Holiday” not “Christmas” trees. Why? we might wonder. It is because “Christmas” means something definite. Of course, even the word “holiday” means “holy day.” Still, it is a form of blasphemy to celebrate Christmas when nothing transcendent is acknowledged to celebrate. Christmas still reveals souls, even in high places.

What is important about Christmas is a fact. This fact is that God was born into this world at a certain time and place. The world cannot be what it is without recognizing this fact: that what has origins in eternity, in “the fullness of time,” came to dwell amongst us. We can and are making every effort to eradicate this fact from our perception. But it will not go away. Without Christmas, our world has no meaning but what we give to it. Yet, Christmas remains at the heart of the world, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells.

While the cultural barbarians cannot do away with Christmas entirely, as they would clearly like to, they do something equally sinister by stripping Christmas of its actual purpose and value. For over a thousand years our ancestors understood that Christmas signified the entry of the divine logos into the world and the reunion the divine with the human. They understood its transcendent origin.

For modern man, there is no God, no divine transcendence. There is only man and the world he shapes for himself. As such, our modern liberal elites must seek to secularized Christmas, and render it a purely therapeutic exercise about abstract ideals of being nice to people, etc., without every providing a reason why we should value such acts.

But it is hard for one to kick against the pricks, and those who rebel against God and His transcendence do so only to their own detriment. The fact is that the Son of God did become man and enter into this world and has forever changed it. Postmodernist word games and therapeutic liberal moralism can never serve as a substitute for our Savior.

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