Free Republic

Ask any schoolboy what the meaning of Christmas is, and he will say it celebrates the birth of Jesus. Ask the ideologues at Microsoft, and they will say it means whatever their politics dictate. This year it represents an opportunity to exploit Christmas by pushing the LGBT agenda. Microsoft has released a TV ad, “Art of Harmony,” that is laden with Christmas overtones, yet absent of Christian content. “This holiday season we brought together a group of people who are making a difference in the world,” the ad says. It does not say what holiday is being observed, though we...

A school district in Oregon is joining many others around the country in a controversial decision to refrain from using religious-themed decorations during the holidays, including images like Santa Claus. KATU reports Santa Claus decorations are no longer welcome in Hillsboro Schools, outside Portland. The district sent this memo to staff: "You may still decorate your door or office if you like, but we ask that you be respectful and sensitive to the diverse perspectives and beliefs of our community and refrain from using religious-themed decorations or images like Santa Claus."

SOUTH BEND — The student and parents suing Concord schools over the annual Christmas Spectacular are still seeking a court order barring the school from reverting to older versions of the show that contain live Nativity scenes. In a filing last week in U.S. District Court in South Bend, the anonymous Concord Community Schools student and three parents suing the school district say school officials' promises to use mannequins instead of live actors to depict the Nativity aren't enough. A court filing in the case by the school district in early October says Concord Community Schools Superintendent John Trout and...

Politicians in Washington aren’t going to care much right now about a movie depicting the short life of a Christian girl, according to film producer Chuck Howard. But that’s not going to stop the Nashville resident from trying to motivate lawmakers to take on Google and dismantle what he says has become a biased media monopoly. ... faith-based film “I’m Not Ashamed,” .. film’s trailer garnered over 5 million views before YouTube removed the channel nearly a year ago. The channel was recently reinstated after The Hollywood Reporter contacted YouTube about the incident. However, the channel was hit with a...

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Montgomery County Public Schools will remove religious labels from school holidays, but members of the Islamic community say the adjustments to the school calendar do nothing to gain parity and a day off for the Muslim holiday of Eid.

Christmas and Easter have been stricken from next year’s school calendar in Montgomery County. So have Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. Montgomery’s Board of Education voted 7 to 1 Tuesday to eliminate references to all religious holidays on the published calendar for 2015-2016, a decision that followed a request from Muslim community leaders to give equal billing to the Muslim holy day of Eid al-Adha.

It is a well-known fact that the corporate world is powered by high-end coffees. With pithy corporate executives forced to work early morning hours to keep their companies competitive, they must find a good source of status-quot coffee to start their day and show they are in charge. Powerful liberals understand this fact and have thus encouraged young lesbians to start ‘exciting careers’ in the barista industry. By working at local Starbucks nationwide, lesbians have...

Valentine's Day is the first that will pass without notice at Bruce Vento Elementary. Celebrations of Valentine’s Day and the other “dominant holidays” are ending at one St. Paul elementary school, according to a letter from the principal addressed to families. Principal Scott Masini of Bruce Vento Elementary School, whose student body is overwhelmingly nonwhite, explained in the letter that “my personal feeling is we need to find a way to honor and engage in holidays that are inclusive of our student population.” With Valentine’s Day a little more than two weeks away, Masini noted, “I have come to the...

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