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Today is the first day of Advent, which marks the start of the pre-Christmas season. It is observed by many, if not most, of the Catholic faithful. And it is in popularity among Protestants, particularly those of us who count ourselves evangelical Christians. Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas and ends on Christmas Eve. During that four-week period, the Christian faithful prepare for the commemoration of the birth of Christ. Satan hates Advent. That’s because he wants to take the “Christ” out of Christmas. He doesn’t want Christmas to be a Godly “holy-day.” Rather, his aim is to reduce the...

If you plan on having a Christmas party at the University of Tennessee be sure to leave the Baby Jesus and Santa Claus at home. The taxpayer-funded university’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion recently released an “unofficial” edict calling for the campus to host holiday parties that do not emphasize religion or culture. “Ensure your holiday party is not a Christmas party in disguise,” the organization warned in an online document titled, “Best Practices for Inclusive Holiday Celebrations in the Workplace.”

President Barack Obama’s Department of Veterans Affairs has banned employees at its facility in Salem, Virginia, from saying “Merry Christmas” to veterans.It started as a broader ban that included Christmas trees. Federal law recognizes Christmas as an official federal holiday (5 U.S.C. § 6103) and provides federal employees with a paid day off to celebrate the Christian belief in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.Every year, a White House Christmas Tree and a Capitol Christmas Tree grace those two respective buildings in Washington D.C., and a National Christmas Tree is also officially lighted outdoors for the public to enjoy during that time...

A manger and a banner reading "Merry Christmas" were removed from a public area of a VA hospital in Texas after someone complained about "overly religious and offensive" decorations. "They ruined our decorations," Vietnam veteran Ethel Holloway told television station KENS. "They threw them out."  Holloway said she had been putting up decorations at the Audi Murphy VA Hospital for 33 years—without any problems. This year, her yuletide banner turned out to be problematic."They literally took pieces from the middle of a whole train set, because the middle said 'Merry Christmas,'" helper Grace Martinez told the television station. The South Texas Veterans...

A war on Christmas? Has nobody seen Arthur Christmas? The North Pole has stealth technology and fanatical commando elves—you screw with that at your own peril.  But there was a time in America when celebrating Christmas was illegal. For 22 years in the 17th century, from 1659-1681, celebrating Christmas carried a hefty fine imposed by Puritans who viewed the holiday as a borrowing from pagan Roman celebrations. “Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so...

Whether it's giving gifts or munching on candy canes, everyone loves Christmas traditions, but few people know how or where these customs came from. Find out the surprising, funny and even nothing-to-do with-Jesus roots of these common Christmas traditions. Why's it called Xmas? It's a short form we've all used on greeting cards when we didn't have enough space, but few people know why 'x' is a good substitute for 'Christ' in 'Christmas'. Turns out, the Greek letter 'chi' is written as 'x' and is the first letter of the word 'Christ' in Greek. While the use of the word...

Parishioners at several New Jersey churches are distraught about a string of creche crimes: the theft of baby Jesus statues.Statues of the infant have been taken from five churches since Christmas Eve, according to the Archdiocese of Newark. Parishioners at St. Clare Church in Clifton reacted with dismay Sunday after a baby Jesus statue was apparently stolen from the church's outdoors nativity scene overnight. The statue disappeared between 7 p.m. Saturday and 7 a.m. Sunday, according to Father Peter Galbik. The small figure had just been purchased this holiday seaso "We are deeply disturbed that some group or person stole...

CLIFTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — Police in New Jersey are searching for suspects who stole a baby Jesus statue from a church nativity scene. The statue disappeared from outside St. Clare’s church in Clifton sometime between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. on Saturday night into Sunday morning, CBS2 reported. The church said it has asked parishioners to post pictures of the nativity scene on social media to help police in the search. In Newark, a spokesman for Newark’s Archbishop John J. Myers confirmed there have been four other burglaries from local parishes, CBS2 reported. It is unclear whether these burglaries are...

To be clear, Christmas in the United States, despite the name, has very little to do with Jesus Christ and everything to do with consumerism and gift giving. However, side by side with Easter, it’s also the time when we are most likely to see depictions of Jesus used as tools of white supremacy. In Atlanta, I see them everywhere I go. Jesus as a blond-haired, blue-eyed baby and his blue-eyed supermodel mother are ubiquitous and done without even a slight hint of humor. It's preposterous. It would truly be no different from depicting Christopher Columbus as a dark-skinned African...

Biblical Birth Narratives Are Weird And Incredible. We Can Stop Sanitizing Them. By W. David O. Taylor W. David O. Taylor is assistant professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. December 24 Infertility, divorce, shame, mass murder, astrologers, injustice and doubt: these are a few of the topics that appear in the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke, but it is unlikely that they will feature in many of the sermons or pageants at our churches during this season of the year. One would scarcely know how bizarre these narratives are, in fact, by the activities of artists...

Benzi Gopstein, leader of the extremist anti-assimilationist group Lehava, has called for the prevention of Christmas celebrations in Israel and the expulsion of Christians whom he compared to "vampires." "Christmas has no place in the Holy Land," he wrote, adding "Let us remove the vampires before they once again drink our blood." The Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism and the Coalition Against Racism have asked the deputy prosecutor for special functions, as well as the police unit in charge of cybercrime, to investigate. The movements wrote: "The article calls for the prevention of celebration of Christmas, the most...

Red Foley--Put Christ Back Into Christmas

<p>The New York City Police Department is ramping up security around tourist hotspots, but denies a report claiming it received a "credible threat" against the city ahead of Christmas.</p> <p>Commissioner William Bratton held an emergency meeting with authorities Tuesday to urge police officers to remain vigilant during the busy holiday season, sources told PIX11 News.</p>

The cover of the December 1970 issue of the National Lampoon showed a Chinese fighter pilot shooting down Santa's sleigh. As St. Nick tumbles from the sky, the pilot growls: "Eat Death, bloated lackey of the capitalist toy mongers!" In 1970, the war on Christmas was just a gleam in the eye of an ACLU lawyer. Today, it's everywhere. 'Tis the season to pretend there's no reason for the season – that Ramadan, Kwanza and Diwali are just as important to the American people as mistletoe and holly. The Wittensville, Kentucky school district announced that, based on a single complaint,...

BLAINE, Minn. (WCCO) — Some parents in the Anoka-Hennepin School District are questioning a choir teacher’s decision to use a song about Ramadan performed in Arabic at a holiday concert. At Thursday night’s concert at Blaine High School, one of the songs students will be singing includes Arabic words, including the phrase “Allahu Akbar,” which means “God is great.” Christian and Jewish songs will be performed as well, but the Ramadan song is getting all the attention. It started with a post on Facebook. A parent of a ninth-grade Blaine choir student posted the lyrics to the song the choir...

IT is 10 days until christmas. Will Google notice and have a special Christmas logo? Or a non-denominational "Happy Holiday" OR will they do what they did on Easter instead of honoring the day of the Resurrection of Christ they used someone more important - Cesar Chavez?

Here is Jesus H. Christ, walking around modern America, right now. Can you imagine him? Here is, in other words, a dark-skinned, bearded, unkempt Middle Eastern Jew, acting all kinds of suspicious, ranting on street corners and hanging around with prostitutes and fanatics, rejecting money, violence and the ruling class, seen by Muslims as the divine precursor to their prophet as he lures the innocent and the seditious into his lawless cult of pacifism and peace.

Santa Claus is banned. The Pledge of Allegiance is no longer recited. "Harvest festival" has replaced Thanksgiving, and "winter celebrations" substitute for Christmas parties. New principal Eujin Jaela Kim has given PS 169 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a politically correct scrub-down, to the dismay of teachers and parents. "We definitely can't say Christmas, nothing with Christmas on it, nothing with Santa,"PTA president Mimi Ferrer said administrators told her. "No angels. We can't even have a star because it can represent a religious system, like the Star of David." Kim, 33, did not return a call or e-mail seeking comment.

Beard baubles are so last year. This year, hirsute hipsters too cool for ugly Christmas sweaters have decided to pay tribute to the spirit of the holidays by glitter-bombing their beards.

A man who was linked Wednesday to the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings was described by someone who identified himself as his father as a Muslim who was "very religious." NBC News has reported that one of the suspects killed by police after the shootings at the Inland Regional Center is Syed Farook. Farook and a woman were killed in a gunfight with police in nearby Redlands after the rampage at the center that killed 14 people and wounded 17 others. San Bernardino County records showed that someone with that name was an employee at the county's Environmental Health Department. The...