Although 27% of Americans have no religious tie to Christmas, many atheists, Jews, Muslims and Hindus are in full swing with Christmas trees, lights, gifts and more. Why Scrooge on joy?
Among people with no Christian identity, they found:
• 74% give Christmas gifts to family or friends.
• 72% gather for a Christmas dinner with loved ones
• 62% put up a Christmas tree
• 56% decorate their home
• 23% encourage belief in Santa
Some even get close to the Christ-centered heart of Christmas: 11% attend a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day worship service and 9% say they encourage belief in Jesus Christ as savior. This may be because about 11% of non-Christians told LifeWay they were wed to a Christian.
LifeWay Research director Scott McConnell has a theory about the 8% on non-Christians who say they buy Advent calendars to count down the days to the birth of Jesus. When he looked at Advent calendars on Amazon, he found “only one has a nativity on it. (There are) lots of Santa, toys, and chocolate. Who wouldn’t like that?”
But “Christmas-for-all,” minus Christ, is a problem to those who take a serious stand on the theology of the holy day such as Rev. Michael Horton, professor at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, Calif., and host of The White Horse Inn, a radio talk show on evangelical theology theology.
The gigantic American Christmas has trivialized the birth of a savior into cultural superficiality for all, a philosophy that is “as innocuous as possible, he says.
“When Jews or agnostics or atheists want to celebrate a winter event, that makes perfect sense. But if Christmas has come to mean something even atheists can celebrate, if it is so far removed from the birth of Christ that it no longer has a serious religious meaning,” Horton says, “that’s not respect for Christmas, that’s assimilation.”