Yes, the war on Christmas is real

As much as it pains me to admit this, Fox News is right about something: Our nation has declared a war on Christmas. Except that this war isn’t fueled by the semantics of the term “Happy Holidays” as Bill O’Reilly or Sarah Palin would have us believe. It has nothing to do with the secularization of winter concert music across our nation’s public elementary schools. It’s not even about the removal of nativity scenes from state government buildings.

Christmas is under attack by the sales that now begin on Thanksgiving Day, ripping families away from their dinner tables to stand in endless lines in pursuit of worthless crap. It’s under attack here, in North Carolina, by legislation that slashed unemployment benefits and rejected federal funds to expand Medicaid. It’s under attack when we have 11 million undocumented immigrants treated as less than human by a broken immigration system that the House of Representatives refuses to even vote on. And it’s under attack when, a year after 20 children were gunned down at their elementary school, we’ve made absolutely no progress on gun control.

Do you know what my favorite part of the Christmas story is? The stable — the dark, stinky, dirty stable in which Mary had to give birth. I’ve given birth a couple of times and let me tell you, it is a messy business, even when it happens in state-of-the-art hospital rooms with fresh linens, bright lights and unlimited ice chips. I can’t imagine having to do it lying in hay, surrounded by livestock. But that’s exactly how Jesus was born, and it wasn’t by accident.

From his very first breath in which he, undoubtedly, perceived the stench of manure, Christ rejected opulence. Throughout his entire life, he defended and blessed the poor, the weak, the sick, the foreign, the less-than. He actually said, “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

Keeping Christ in Christmas has nothing to do with words and symbols and absolutely everything to do with actions.

Yet, there is an unsettling sentiment in the Christian community that the poor in our country are entirely responsible for their condition. A recent article published on financial advisor and evangelical Christian Dave Ramsey’s website lists 20 things the rich do every day and compares them to the habits of the poor.

The article says things like, 76 percent of wealthy exercise aerobically four days a week vs. 23 percent of poor. Eighty percent of wealthy read 30 minutes or more each day for education or career reasons vs. 2 percent of poor; and 67 percent of wealthy watch one hour or less of TV every day vs. 23 percent of poor.

After receiving backlash — some coming from fellow Christians — Ramsey posted a response on his website. He dug his heels in, called his critics immature, and insisted that choices cause results. “You reap what you sow,” he wrote.

While we can’t rule out individual choices as a possible cause of poverty, Ramsey seems to be ignoring the systemic and institutionalized inequalities that disproportionately affect the poor. I was reminded of these injustices the other day when, by chance, I happened to catch the CNN Heroes award ceremony. To my delight, Robin Emmons, a Charlottean, was recognized for the work she does with Sow Much Good, a nonprofit organization she founded to bring healthy, sustainable produce to our city’s food deserts.

According to Sow Much Good’s website, Mecklenburg County has 60 neighborhoods with more than 73,000 residents without access to affordable, healthy food. The article on Ramsey’s website also includes a statistic about food: 70 percent of wealthy eat less than 300 junk food calories per day; 97 percent of poor people eat more than 300 junk food calories per day. Using Ramsey’s “you reap what you sow” logic, you would think that eating junk food is what makes people poor when the reality is exactly the opposite. The poor eat more junk food because they live in communities without access to anything else. Eating junk food is the result of being poor, not vice versa.

And so this December, I ask, who is truly winning the war on Christmas? Is it the disgruntled shopper who demands to be wished a Merry Christmas from the cashier at Walmart after maxing out her credit card buying cheap goods made in sweatshops on the other side of the world? Or is it women like Emmons, fighting to alleviate the effects of the institutionalized marginalization of the poor? How do you think the baby in a manger who grew up to become the most radical defender of the underprivileged would want us to celebrate his birthday?

This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2013.