Always winter but never Christmas

The Christmas Wars are grinding to a halt for yet another year. It is only a temporary cessation. We can expect a renewal of hostilities by about All Saints Day, 2007. There will be renewed demands from the community of the sensitive to ban Christmas trees from airports. Christmas trees are "dangerous" in that they may remind fastidious souls that the evergreen, (a formerly pagan symbol) was Christianized many centuries ago. Among other things, evergreen trees symbolize the unending life that broke in upon this wintry earth with the birth of the Christ-child.

There will be increased efforts to secularize this holy day and downplay its Christian significance. Christmas-deniers will bring greater pressure to bear upon major retailers. More employees will be required to substitute an insipid "Happy Holiday" for a sturdy "Merry Christmas!" Continuing a trend that became evident this year, the mainstream media will feature more articles on the winter solstice, commenting with a perfectly straight face upon it's ancient (Pagan) symbolism. Schools will let out for "winter break" and if there be any remaining public institution foolish enough to offer a "Christmas vacation," they will soon be whipped into line.

One of the major cities in our area sponsors a spectacular Christmas lighting that we look forward to every year, anticipating the enjoyment it affords. It was spoiled this year. Apparently, some sour soul or some cranky organization got to the city fathers. The lights were just as numerous, the colors just as spectacular, and the display just as imaginative. However, as you drove into town you were confronted with the new title of the display: Winter Spirit.

So what is "Winter Spirit?" I understand "Celebrate Snow." And although it is rather poverty stricken as greetings go, I even understand "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings." But "Winter Spirit?" What is THAT? Is it meant to convey the deep religious symbolism inherent in the Pagan celebration of the rebirth of the sun? Probably not. More likely it is a confused capitulation to crotchety secularists, ever vigilant in their fanatic determination to root out all vestiges of Christian America.

The ACLU and their bed partners insist that this is all being done as part of an effort to respect every tradition. In truth, their goal is the secularization of society. Ours is not the first society to banish Christmas. Since the birth of Jesus, there have been repeated attempts to smother its significance beginning with the attempt of Herod to murder the child.

In our own time, communists in the former Soviet Union went to great lengths to eradicate Christmas. Fearing an uprising, they proceeded incrementally, but eventually all Christmas commemorations were banned. Grandfather Frost replaced St. Nicholas. This Stalinist creation wore a red cap and the long white beard of Santa Claus but delivered gifts to children on New Year's Eve. Christmas trees were also banned. Soviet communism folded all Christmas celebrations into a New Year celebration.

In the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan gave a number of speeches extolling the bravery of Soviet Christians who confronted communism's campaign to castrate Christmas. Citizens continued to trim their trees. Defying the ban on Christmas carols, Ukrainian Christians sang in the street, knowing that by so doing, they risked arrest and imprisonment. The Soviet Union is now gone and here and there, Christmas is again breaking through.

Meanwhile in America, we are edging toward the condition that the White Witch designed for her joyless Narnia. In Lewis' book, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," the story opens with Narnia under the wicked rule of the White Witch. By her magical powers, the usurping witch arranged things so that it was "always winter, but never Christmas." As happens with all tyrants, the witch's power eventually began to fade. One of the first indications that she was losing control was that Christmas began to break through into that frigid land. Must we be forced to allow winter to crush Christmas? Say it isn't so.

Ed Iverson is a former Fallon resident currently living in Idaho.