Christmas: The Shot Heard 'Round the World

Festivus Feelings Give Way to a Conquering King

Here we are at Christmas, and the hustle bustle has given me some thoughts. Most aren’t very festive ones, so heads up— this will start as a sort of long and nostalgic Festivus post, a nod to the Seinfeld holiday for the “rest of us,” and conclude with battle commentary, although I’m no Victor Davis Hanson.

As I see it, the face of Christmas hasn’t exactly been a holly, jolly scene so far. First, I live in Atlanta, a city that has experienced increasing crime under those who believe in decreasing consequences. I’ve navigated stores full of stony, masked faces, with my own unmasked face stoically turning to stone as well. Our traffic is epic, although that’s not unique to this season.

My senses are under assault, daily. Yesterday, a female cashier, rounded and with a feminine voice, sported purple hair and bare arms covered in tatoos, but also a stomach-churning, solid mustache. In every store, I’m given the requisite, cursory “Happy Holidays” despite the dominant red and green displays marking the last week of Christmas.

I’ve stared at grocery shelves with missing products and outlandish prices—we did it, Joe! I was, of course, relieved to find that my mass-produced $7.00 loaf of bread was “produced by wind energy” before being shipped across the country by wicked fossil fuels.

There are some bright spots in retail, though: Nearly every clothing store features a selection of merchandise emblazoned with rainbows or sequined, moralizing reminders to “be kind.” This is usually located near the “wine o’clock” shirts. This must be part of the magic of Christmas.

On my way home, I passed able-bodied drug addicts who ride “community” scooters (or Uber) on their way to panhandle and pile trash by my neighborhood. Not exactly the pitiful street urchins from Oliver Twist, nor the truly disabled poor. More than once, I’ve observed them working with others who arrive to pick up the cardboard cash call, the trick of the trade; but even the homeless have free market urges.

In the political realm, there’s always a new virtue signal to mock. This year, leftists are wild about the the flag—the Ukrainian flag, that is. Eager to paint one of the most corrupt nations in the world with the respectability of democracy, they stick the blue and yellow in yards and on social media profiles. A neighbor accented her fancy privacy gate with a distinctive Ukraine flag—with the added panache of the Marxist fist, underscoring stupidity.

Buried in the trappings of Christmas clutter and to-do lists, it’s easy for me to get discouraged and dream of “easier times.” When I’m frustrated at the idiocy around me, I find myself ever so nostalgic for the past. We all know nostalgia is dangerous; the past wasn’t sinless, painless, or glorious. But there is such a thing as better, and better it was.

Call it Grinchiness, or call it wistfulness—the shine is off this year, and I miss life among the sensible people. For me, that time was in my childhood—a time when Atari and Pac-Man were the technology wonders in my friends’ homes. My old 1980’s heroes weren’t all deep thinkers, but they did at least think.

For them, it was a good idea to incentivize work, build families, protect children from perverts, and salute the (American) flag. In my formative years, those weren’t radical or “white privilege” ideas. They were givens, accepted by most, and thought to be the impermeable fences around American life.

The eighties held charms in pedestrian ways. Dogs didn’t ride in strollers, men didn’t wear jeggings, and parents didn’t helicopter so much. Schools didn’t use 42 apps to complicate things like reporting grades or making basic announcements. Kids weren’t whisked away curbside from school after a parent sat idling in a carpool line for 30 minutes.

By today’s standards, we lived a harsh life. Dogs were beloved but consigned to being animals, not “fur babies”; some of us even had dog houses in the back yard. Grades were sent home on yellow carbon copies, either mailed or tucked into folders to be “signed and returned” to confirm we had parents. After school, we left, either meeting at the bike rack to see who might kiss or fight, or waiting for mom out front after the bus riders departed. More than once, I watched my principal leave campus for the day while I waited for mom to show up with no cell phone to contact her.

Clothing was memorably ugly, but nobody wanted to look androgynous (except Boy George). Aside from the punk rock crowd, kids weren’t really forming identities around green hair. With the exception of a few P.E. teachers, you didn’t have to guess someone’s gender.

Our free time was accounted for, but not by soccer schedules or apps sending notifications all day. Instead, we had a prime-time TV schedule to track. Magnum P.I. came on Thursday nights; Dukes of Hazard was on Friday nights; kids with permissive parents allowed theme to stay up and watch Knot’s Landing, a no-no in my house. Fantasy Island’s adulterous story lines, with Mr. Roarke’s shady presence, never seemed right at church the next morning.

Those details played out in a moral universe that my children can only dream of. We had real freedoms and real fences. Our freedoms are today marks of ignorance or outright offenses. I rode my bike to school, across the train tracks, and to other neighborhoods. We never were locked down, not even when Chicken Pox raged (my kids are amazed I survived it). It wasn’t “cool” to be a practicing Christian, but it also wasn’t “white Christian privilege” or “hate”.

Schoolwork was found in textbooks and on “dittos” that smelled of fresh ink. Teachers weren’t trained as social justice warriors. Discipline was real; I received a solid paddling from my middle school dean for sneaking baked treats from my Home Economics classroom. Stocky football coaches were also available to remind campus miscreants that stupidity earns special rewards.

Life in the surrounding town was different, too. Shiftless urban men weren’t encouraged to get around to their non-employment by sharing a scooter. The police were respected, yet feared among the lawless. You could go to a mall without fear of a shooting—not because of “gun laws”, but because kids weren’t following the idiotic pied pipers of social media.

Back then, the big threat was the Russians, but Ronald Reagan managed to do what seems impossible now. He kept peace through deterrence and treated communism as the ruthless religious enemy that it truly is. We still had our political squabbles, but we weren’t arguing over what it meant to be a female or pushing a restyled Marxism.

Speaking of politics, it’s striking to think how normal patriotism was back then. My own public school promoted a national essay contest in 1986. I dove in and was selected among the 150 essay writers who would go to Washington that June to hear Ronald Reagan speak and shake Secretary of Education Bennett’s hand. I’ll never forget sweltering in the Rose Garden in my Sunday best and touring the National Mall in swampy heat.

Now, schools find ways to sow bitter doubts about the American project and its founding documents, with more talk about race and LGBTQ issues than the Constitution. Patriotism and American exceptionalism are now demonized as products of patriarchy, colonizers and white privilege.

Little did many of us suspect, though, that even then, the foundations were already under attack. The door to decline was opened earlier when John Dewey’s bad ideas formed the architecture of modern education. A couple of generations later, the Great Society undermined the American character by lowering expectations and raising government dependency.

By the 1980’s, progressive education was doing its work, thought quietly. Teachers’ Unions and their cronies at education schools ensured that a continual supply of “licensed” leftists would stream into our schools. The education degree requirement helps to ensure that most American kids will not hear voices that deviate from the left’s grand plans.

Evil crept quietly and casually for decades while we were lulled into peaceful complaisance. The effort to undermine our country through education has been successful; undergraduate and continuing education courses now ensure that nearly every American teacher has been discipled in the ways of old Marxists, despite the ugly carnage that Marxism has waged on every nation it has infected.

As our higher education system tunneled our soil quietly, things above ground seemed ok. No pandemic, no radical social unrest, no Bidenflation, no 99 genders. We got phones, gps, streaming music, and colleges on every corner. Life has grown faster, more luxurious, and flush with all sorts of “knowledge”—both real and fake.

Many nod approvingly at our world of 99 genders and resurrected Marxists and fatherless criminals. They imagine that “kindness” tee-shirts and interfaith dialogue or DEI programs will abolish “hate” and bring us together—not in our families, but in a poster-collage of “community”.

On the contrary, despite moralizing about being “on the right side of history,” the zealots of the cultural left bring no unity; they sit amid our carnage, smiling in willful ignorance at the surrounding chaos and rot.

So I sit in my own Christmastime funk, aware that below my feelings of irritation lies the awareness that my world, boasting of technology, activism and expertise—has grown darker—and in Biblical measure.

Having reached my dreary vista, I see devastations, but one must look beyond the easily visible hilltops to spot what enabled this dispirited scene. Evil and darkness accelerated when good was muzzled, a repeating cycle of rebellion against truth.

Observe that every epoch is marked by personal brokenness and mankind’s worst exploits. Since the fall in the garden, the earth has groaned under its burden of historical villains and everyday malice. Look back to medieval torture chambers, the gruesome persecution of Huguenots, the horrors of slavery, and the holocaust massacre of Jews. Look at our broken homes and addictions to dispel any doubts about the resident evil of human nature.

In 2022, we are not allowed to suggest boundaries for our behavior, and doing so is condemned as hate. Therefore, our people wear the sickly faces of evil: angry mobs, sexual brokenness, an epidemic of unhappy transgender people, fatherless homes, ghetto violence, endless piercings, rainbow hair, sexualized children and drug addictions.

And what of our government and its ponderous bureaucracies? Our political leaders trade in history’s worst ideas if they might deliver votes. Abominations like Socialism and Marxism, strangling liberties in the service of twisted social justice—all are the faces of political evil.

Such a dreary accounting of reality suggests that I’ve lost the “Christmas spirit.” But it’s impossible to discuss this disenchantment—and its seasonal Festivus feels—without acknowledging its spiritual nature.

In truth, I’m a believer in Christmas—but not in the lies about “goodness inside us all” or in “the magic of Christmas.” The fluff of Christmas cringe and Hallmark promises hides the real significance and hope behind it.

Instead, I believe the truth that Christmas marks a shift in the offensive against our great mortal enemy. I no longer see just a three-week respite of music and cocoa and merriment; I see a historic strike—the Saratoga, Stalingrad, or Normandy in a transcendent story.

Two blows were delivered in unlikely fashion for a king. Jesus was born outside near livestock, the only place available for his humble parents as they traveled. He grew up to conquer death, but his crucifixion looked like defeat. He hung naked, mocked, murdered before the crowds, an apparent victory for Pharisees and Roman officials. He waited three days to announce to his followers what the rulers in heavenly places already knew—he was alive, and death was defeated.

We are told there are “election deniers” now, but for thousands of years, deniers have plugged their ears to the most significant news ever published: God’s promised savior came to live among us, just as prophets foretold more than 500 years before his birth. His death and resurrection was done on behalf of only those who throw themselves on his mercies.

The incarnation was the ultimate strike in human history, a quiet offensive in this war to end all wars. The cross dealt the enemy his final blow and established a peace treaty between God and his sin-addled people, former enemy combatants now drawn irresistibly to surrender.

While the deniers still close ears and eyes to God’s rule, he continues to gather his people, generation by generation. He has won, and the grand story he chose to showcase his love is still playing out for each generation. The ugly details we cannot understand are prickly strands in a history he designed with dramatic splendor.

As the disciples waited in fear but were finally awed by his resurrected body, so we wait; and in a moment that will break the heavenly silence, the millennia of faithful will look around in giddy delight. We’ll see and touch the faithfulness of God in our own resurrected flesh but even more so in the long-awaited face of Jesus. The march to victory will end with a celebration like no other—including Christmas.

The plague of Festivus feelings remind us of the yawning gap between reality and holiday hoopla. Yes, there are festivities and gifts and a break from crushing routines, but the holiday fare, without the Christ of Christmas, is much ado about nothing. Without the real hero in the bloody battle, we are desperately pretending that merriment brings peace.

For those of us tempted to raise the Festivus pole, drowning in hectic holiday noise, the “shot heard ‘round the world” is a call to spiritual arms. We’ll sing carols of courage while the battle plays out—at Christmastime and beyond.