Some recent examples:

· In Denver, Colo., organizers of the city’s annual “Festival of Lights” parade ban the Faith Bible Chapel’s nativity float on the grounds that it violates a policy “against overtly religious and political themes.”


· School districts in Florida and New Jersey prohibit Christmas carols from being sung during school festivities. At least one high school (Maplewood, N.J.), takes the additional step of including instrumental versions of Christmas carols in the ban.


· Boscov’s, a Pennsylvania-based department store, removes from stock all Christmas cards that mention ... Christmas. Meanwhile, a number of national retailers, including Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, eliminate “Merry Christmas” from this year’s holiday decorations.


· New York City outlaws Nativity scenes in public schools while continuing to allow menorahs and Stars and Crescents. Challenged over the policy, the City responds by arguing that the birth of Jesus was “not an historical event.”

One could easily continue. In recent years, snubbing Christmas – and, by extension, Christians – has become a favorite winter pastime of junior bureaucrats and petty officials everywhere.* While examples such as these may seem silly at first glance, taken together they represent a disturbing new trend toward the exclusion of Christianity from American public culture.

Christmas celebrations have long included secular elements – the Nativity scene and Santa’s helpers, midnight mass and Jingle Bells. By contrast, the purely secular celebration of the holiday – the only sort that you’re likely to find on display at your local “Festival of Lights” parade – is a very recent invention indeed. In just under two decades, the sacred-secular Christmas with which most of us grew up has been replaced by a catch-all winter holiday celebrating nothing more significant than a few days off work or school.

In a thousand little ways, Christians are no longer welcome at Christmas.

It is a striking development. The vast majority of Americans, after all, are practicing Christians. Why would city officials, many of whom depend for their jobs on the good will of voters, go out of their way to publicly snub their constituents’ holiest day? Why would retailers and advertisers, normally keen to target niche markets, be at such pains to eliminate from their year-end sales’ pitch even the most cursory reference to the holiday’s Christian sources?

Many supporters of a secular-only Christmas seem to believe that they have the law on their side. They claim that the US Constitution mandates the separation of Church and State: Christmas may ultimately be a religious holiday, they allow, but the law forbids public authorities from recognizing it as such. How this “rule” is applied depends on the zeal of local officials. Most often, it simply means that Nativity scenes are no longer welcome on public property. In an increasing number of cases, however, it is also taken as an excuse for purging holiday celebrations of all Christian references – not just Nativity scenes and Christmas carols but also that inconvenient word “Christmas” itself.

There are a number of problems with the constitutional case for a secular-only Christmas, not least that no court has ever held that Christian symbols are inappropriate in public celebrations of the holiday. Nor is it obvious how they could, for the Constitution merely states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The intent of this rule – the so-called “Establishment Clause” of the First Amendment – is to guarantee freedom of worship to all Americans, regardless of their religious identity. How kicking Christianity out of public celebrations of Christmas furthers this aim is anything but clear.

That is, unless you believe that the mere mention of Christ constitutes an assault on non-Christian Americans. Sadly, it seems that an increasing number of Americans believe precisely this. For when they’re not making noises about the Constitution, the secular-only crowd is talking about “diversity.” Anyone who has spent time on a college campus in recent years will be familiar with the move. After pointing out that ours is an increasingly multicultural society – a statement of fact about which we can all agree – diversity mongers pretend concern for the feelings of religious minorities. “Won’t Christian symbols make non-Christians feel ‘unwelcome’?” they ponder. “Isn’t there something just a little, well, ‘offensive’ about Christmas?”

As one Maplewood, N.J., parent put it, speaking of the school board’s ban on Christmas carols: “Holiday celebrations where Christmas music is being sung make people feel different, and because it is such a majority, it makes the minority feel uncomfortable.”

There’s irony to spare in such complaints. As Charles Krauthammer put it in a recent editorial for the Washington Post:

To insist that the overwhelming majority of this country stifle its religious impulses so that minorities can feel ‘comfortable’ not only understandably enrages the majority but commits two sins. The first is profound ungenerosity toward a majority of fellow citizens who have shown such generosity of spirit toward minority religions. The second is the sin of incomprehension [...] Unlike, for example, the famously tolerant Ottoman Empire or the generally tolerant Europe of today, the United States does not merely allow minority religions to exist at its sufferance. It celebrates and welcomes and honors them.

But the question remains: why would something as harmless – and beautiful – as a Nativity scene drive otherwise tolerant people to such pointlessly provocative gestures?

The answer, I’m afraid, has less to do with religion than with demographics. In recent weeks, quite a few commentators have complained of what they see as anti-Christian bias behind the move to secularize the Christmas holiday. There’s something to this view, especially when you consider that the rules applied to exclude Christianity from public celebrations of the holiday are rarely, if ever, applied to non-Christian groups. But as the Maplewood parent quoted above makes clear, what the grinches object to in Christmas has nothing to do with Christian religious doctrine or practice and everything to do with the fact that Christianity is the religion of the American majority.

That’s not going to change anytime soon. Expect the grinches back in full force this time next year.

Oh, and Merry Christmas.

*Two web sites in particular have made it their job to keep track of the ongoing war against Christmas: Vdare.com and savemerrychristmas.org.