a small part in the big story...

I have been seeing and hearing a lot lately about the so-called Christian persecution in the U.S. I guess there was a lot of news around the "war on Christmas", which seemed to involve a bunch of people becoming offended by being wished "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas". Today I flipped the radio to our local Christian radio station and heard people talking about legislative measures that can be taken to stop even more of this persecution in our country.

And then I began thinking about what is offensive in the world. I asked myself, which is more offensive: being wished a Happy Holidays or young children being kidnapped in order to serve in the front lines of rebel armies in Uganda? Having "evil liberals" trying to not allow a Christmas tree in a government office or ignoring the 14 million children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS?

With millions of people going to bed hungry at night, with thousands of teenage girls trying to live up to an unreachable and unattainable physical standard, with young girls being sold into prostitution all over the world, with children being abducted and taken advantage of by oppressors, am I really concerned that the new box in my family room right now is labeled "holiday tree"? Not even a little bit.

As a side note: I heard an amazingly funny a.m. talk show conversation (I know, I know... the discussion on the public radio station was REALLY uninteresting, though...) about the term "Xmas". The "X" in "Xmas", as we all know, stands for "Chi", which is the beginning of "Christos", and is a very legitimate way of shortnening the word "Christmas". Well, this talk show host was squabbling about how it was an attack on Christmas, that the "Xmas" term had been used since the 1940's or so (!), when secularist liberals were beginning to attack Christianity in the U.S. He asked if someone would call him and let him know specifically when it had started being and "acceptable" term. It made me smile. Luckily, a woman called him up and told him that she had looked up the term and it was "Chi" and had been used for centuries, according to her research. The talk show guy then got all excited and said that the secularist liberals tried to take the Christ out of Christmas even further back than he thought, and that they had failed, because they obviously didn't know what the "X" stood for. It made me smile even more, and check NPR, desperately hoping that a new segment had come on.

Why, oh why, can't people stop being offended by such self-centered things? There really are people being taken advantage of and even dying because we're looking the wrong way.

What would Jesus be offended by?

posted by Anne @ 11:23 AM