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The Meaning of Christmas
Is Christmas meaningless without Christ?
Some of my most cherished childhood memories are with my family at Christmastime. Baking cookies, decorating the tree, putting up lights, singing songs by the fire, attempting to create the longest paper chain, attending the candlelight service… It was a magical time full of fun, togetherness and deep spiritual meaning. My parents worked hard to make the Christmas season special and they succeeded. Their only crime was their misguided sincerity and loyalty to a high-control religion that sprinkled the season (and our entire lives) with toxicity.
Christmas is meaningless without Christ, I was reminded over and over.
It is silly for non-Christians to celebrate Christmas, I learned. Non-Christians only celebrate Christmas for the gifts or as an attempt to co-opt and sabotage sacred traditions that don’t belong to them. Non-Christians are lost, confused, and attempting to distract themselves from their own emptiness.
Intended or not, the message many Christian children receive is that there is no value in celebrating friendships and family or warmth and light during a cold, dark season, because nothing matters except Jesus. The implication was that happiness and pleasure and love and generosity are not worth appreciating on their own; you need to tack Jesus onto everything to make it worthwhile.
Fearful outcries warned that any celebration of Christmas not within the confines of Christianity was an attack on Christian values and truth itself.
A narrow meaning of Christmas was drilled into my head from an early age, and I now argue it is a shallow one.
“Apart from Christ, what’s the point of Christmas?”
Now I can confidently say that sometimes just celebrating being alive is enough. Life and love and being together is plenty to commemorate and set aside as sacred and holy.
The relationships that warm our hearts throughout the cold winter bring meaning and purpose I never felt while in the church. Dedicating time in our busy schedules for those who have our backs fosters a hope we only talked about in Christianity. The carefree bliss of the holidays spark a happiness I never knew when burdened with religious obligation and shame.
The holidays are ripe with meaning for me. We too, are celebrating light in the darkness. The only difference is where we believe that light comes from – oppressive rules or warm relationships? Pious duty or radical hospitality?
I believe the simple beauty of life is worth noticing and focusing on. That’s what makes ordinary things transcendent and extraordinary. Bright red holly berries against sparkly white snow, children’s faces lit up with glee, tasty food crackling over a fire, lending a helping hand to those in need – our response to the call to pay attention determines whether or not miracles exist.
There is so much to love about life even in dark and uncertain times; there is always hope if we are willing to nurture it. Isn’t that what the Christmas Story is all about? Choosing to seek out, interact with and celebrate the existence of light and love and hope no matter the circumstances. This is innately human and sacred and good.
And to me, that is the beautiful meaning of Christmas.
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81%
81%
That’s how many Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. Both times.
“Not all Christians”, sure, but most of them. 8 out of 10.
I was a Progressive Christian for a long time after walking away from most of what the American church had to offer. But eventually I realized the parts I had to leave behind to maintain my authenticity and morality far outnumbered the parts I could carry with me. I had to admit it made more sense to drop the label and toxic associations all together.
There was grief that came with that. Discovering the church’s true colors felt like a betrayal from my culture and community of origin that I had poured so much of myself into.
And then came years of vulnerably sharing my story to be met with “you just had a bad experience”, “not all Christians”, “God didn’t hurt you, people did”, “Christians aren’t perfect”.
Most survivors are well acquainted with the experience of being invalidated and disbelieved, over and over and over again.
But as horrific as the recent election results are for religious trauma survivors, people with disabilities, minorities, the working class, immigrants, and truly the entire nation and world, it also served to validate survivors. It proves our stories correct. We weren’t overreacting or exaggerating. Statistics show that Trump won because of white evangelical votes. Plain and simple, if it weren’t for Christians, a man who ran his entire platform on hate and prejudice would not be president. American Christianity really is that terrible.
“But, but…” You can say all you want to about the minority of Christians and my response will be the same:
81%!
THIS is what most Christians stand for. THIS is what survivors lived through. THIS is why we left. THIS is what we’ve been talking about for years. The election results prove what American Christianity has become, or maybe what it was all along.
Trump says the quiet part out loud; and doesn’t know how to stop saying it. We have video evidence of Trump and his followers openly degrading people because they aren’t male, or they aren’t white, or they aren’t wealthy. These same values are what Christians heard and thought “Yep, that’s my leader!”
Statistics prove that 81% of American Christians support Trump’s hatred toward people of color, his sexual abuse of women and his disregard for their health, his greed and oppression of low-income families, his prejudice against the sick and disabled and his, his sexualization of children, his active harm toward immigrants…
Right now the nation is getting a public snapshot of the inside of the church walls, a sneak peak at what’s behind closed doors. But survivors have been lifting the curtain for decades, telling the horrors of sexual abuse, oppressive gender roles, financial misconduct, corporal punishment, shame, high control, fear-mongering, the list goes on.
Until recent years, it has been easy for Christians to hide their character under the mask of “patriotism” and “family values”, but now it’s all out there, thanks to Trump and his campaign.
Thanks to the election, we have cold hard proof that 81% of Christians support someone whose followers have been recorded saying women shouldn’t be able to vote. 81% of Christians welcome the leadership of someone who publicly sexualizes children. 81% of Christians celebrate a convicted criminal rising to power as long as he maintains and protects their agendas. 81% of Christians stand with a man who promises to tear apart families because of where they were born, and declares a need for military and police violence on anyone who believes differently. In today’s media-centric digital world, ignorance is not a valid excuse.
This election has proven that Christians care more about enforcing prayer rituals in school than they do about feeding hungry school children. They care more about the hemline of a woman’s skirt than they do about those shivering without a winter coat. They care more about stockpiling deadly weapons than they do about preventing the murder of children. And above all, they want to be the ones to decide who is worthy – to live in a decent neighborhood or make a living wage or receive quality healthcare or live in their country. Somehow Christians themselves always make the cut, but I guess that’s easy when designing your own morals.
Christians preach not to worry because God is in control and he has a plan – “give it all to God” they say and in the next breath spread fear and cling to control; “We must stop this attack on traditional values!” they cry. “Get ready for battle! We must win this war against our way of life!” The Christian agenda has always been different than their declared beliefs. It’s about control first, and punishment second, for anyone they can’t control.
Christians say this world isn’t their home, they are just passing through, and yet they are desperate to customize the entire world to their exact specifications.
Christians say salvation must come from freewill and a genuine confession of faith and yet they try to force everyone to live religiously by legislating Christian law.
Christians say it is God’s place to judge, and yet their entire platform is based on identifying and beating the “bad guys” and punishing anyone who dares disagree.
Christians say they must defend their faith even to the point of death, and yet they sign their lives away to a candidate identical to the antichrist.
Christian theology teaches that the world will inevitably become less and less Christian as time goes on, and yet they still fight tooth and nail against losing their place as the majority. What about God having a plan?
Appealing to Christians’ empathy for human suffering is a lost cause. They applaud suffering as long as it affects those who are different, because they believe we deserve eternal damnation and we have it coming to us. Why should they care about our quality of life when they believe we are about to be thrown into a well-deserved lake of fire? Why should they work hard or make sacrifices so nonbelievers can be temporarily happy before their impending doom? “It’s all gonna burn anyway, so who cares?”
If any Christians reading this feel defensive or misrepresented, remember – 81% of you voted for Trump. We have statistics to prove what your religion stands for. You can’t argue numbers. If you don’t like being represented by the majority of the community you pledge allegiance to, maybe it’s time to leave.
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Listen to Survivors
Listen to survivors.
We are the experts on our own stories. We have already experienced Project 2025 firsthand. We have lived through the future that right-wing politicians want for our country.
We have no agenda other than never wishing our life stories on anyone. Listen to us when we tell you we know what is happening in our country right now, we see where it is going, and it needs to be stopped.
Trump and Vance, their supporters, and proponents of Project 2025 are not a fringe extremist group. They are only saying the quiet part out loud. They are slowly exposing the hidden reality that has been allowed to grow and fester behind closed doors for decades. They want us to get used to it. Right-wing politicians and their loyal followers are giving us a kaleidoscope of snapshots into what it’s like living in the isolated barracks of evangelicalism. We need to put the pieces together and see the big picture of looming darkness on the horizon.
It was always only a matter of time before churches decided to take their power and control outside their four walls. Dominion theology tells them to. They believe they are commanded by their god to take over the world and rule it according to their religion. It’s no surprise they are ramping up their efforts as church membership steadily declines. When voluntary submission stops working for their goals, they need to force it. They are the American Taliban dead-set on making the United States a “Christian Nation”, and they probably won’t stop there. Christian Nationalists have declared themselves the representatives of a heavenly dictator and they will go to great lengths to ensure compliance to their customized version of morality – whatever is needed to support the kind of society they believe they deserve to benefit from.
Church is inherently political. It always has been. It dictates what individuals and communities are allowed to do and not do, who deserves power and who submits and obeys, decides who deserves or doesn’t deserve charity – if that’s not political, what is?
Remember, when those in power make a law, they design it to benefit themselves. They structure the rules of society to do away with any opposition. Their vision for America is a few privileged, wealthy, powerful men at the top calling all the shots, with everyone else serving them in complete obedience. It’s very difficult to turn something like this around because the only ones with the ability to enact change are the same ones dead-set on preventing it. Now is our chance to do something.
Our two-party political system is deeply flawed, and the Democratic Party is far from perfect. But the simple fact of the matter is that in less than a week one of the two top candidates for US President will win this election and it’s our job to keep a dictator out of power.
Listen to survivors. Hear us and help us prevent these stories of religious trauma from becoming our collective future.
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I Lived Through Project 2025. I almost didn’t.
I almost didn’t survive. Many don’t.
Living in a Christian fundamentalist bubble was pure hell. When you’re kept isolated from the real world and under extremely high control, it’s very difficult to imagine any other way of being. It’s all you know. By happenstance, I found a way out, but I could have been one of the hundreds of my childhood peers who are still back there. And if political conservatives have their way, there will no longer be any escape. There will be no in versus out. No options. That dystopian nightmare will be the only world available.
Christian fundamentalism almost destroyed me and even a decade after getting out, I still rarely feel truly safe. Now I know why. They’re still coming after me – after all of us. And they won’t be satisfied until they have taken over the entire nation, even the world. If that feels far-fetched, look up “Dominion Theology”. It’s a foundational aspect of most branches of Christianity.
While in the church I wanted to die every day, but I thought that was normal. Ingrained messages starting in infancy taught me I was dirty and broken because of sin. Misogyny showed me every day I was inferior, incapable and insignificant. Religiosity tightened my restrictions further every year I grew closer to becoming a woman. The church-to-abusive-marriage pipeline pulled me closer every day toward dangerous men. I would have died; if not physically, then inside.
Depression from my apparent worthlessness tempted me to end my life multiple times. Christian judgment, shame and self-loathing kept me from genuinely smiling or laughing for over a year. Out of pure hatred for myself I purposefully hit my head and wrote poetry about death. I could have easily died.
Anxiety and PTSD kept my body in constant fight-or-flight, wreaking havoc on my health. My muscles atrophied, I felt weak and lightheaded every day, my body was too stressed to absorb enough energy and nutrients from my food. My blood pressure dropped dangerously low and I suffered from chronic dehydration that landed me in the hospital three times. I experienced firsthand how trauma lives in our bodies and slowly kills us. If this had continued on much longer, I likely would have developed a disabling chronic condition as so many survivors do, maybe even died.
As a young woman exploring my desires for companionship and pleasure, I was groomed and pressured to marry so I didn’t sin and make my family look bad or cheapen my worth. I ended up married to a charismatic narcissist who pushed me to the brink of insanity with his mind games. He chipped away at my confidence, and made me do what he said. He weaponized forgiveness and compassion. He spent my money and threatened my well-being if I didn’t submit. By random chance the dominoes fell where I was able to escape before I no longer cared if I lived or died.
As a minor, I wasn’t allowed access to sex education. I was prohibited from getting the HPV vaccine because it might “encourage me to have sex” and “remove the consequences of sin”. So later when my abusive Christian husband cheated on me and exposed me to STI’s, I contracted HPV. It wasn’t discovered until years later when I had to have an emergency surgery to remove the mutated cells. If it wasn’t discovered when it was, I could have died. I know another woman raised in the church who wasn’t so lucky. She lived to be 29.
I wasn’t given access to women’s healthcare because if I was “following God” I shouldn’t have any conditions that needed treating. When I had a miscarriage, I was lucky I had recently left the church and lived in a blue state, or I could have died.
Christian fundamentalism is inherently life-threatening; especially to women, people with disabilities, queer folks, and people of color, but it harms all people – both inside and outside its church walls. The impending possibility of Project 2025 is a matter not only of freedom and happiness, but also literally of life and death.
Christian fundamentalists don’t believe in human rights for anyone who can’t fit inside their narrow roles and expectations. In fact, to them human rights as a concept doesn’t exist – only God’s blessing or God’s wrath. We have no “rights” to anything, but can only accept what God ordains. Thus a queer couple shouldn’t expect to have the right to marry – they are breaking God’s rules for families and don’t deserve God’s blessing. They should receive wrath and discipline for their sin. Lower income families shouldn’t feel entitled to the resources and money they need to thrive. After all, you reap what you sow. Women shouldn’t be eligible to vote or have a career – if they express a different opinion than their husbands or build an independent life, they are challenging the sacred design of headship and stepping outside of God’s protection. They shouldn’t think they have rights over their bodies – that’s countering a scripture that says “your body is not your own”. Breaking God’s rules leads to punishment, not blessing. And yes, Christian fundamentalists are eager to punish anyone they believe has broken their rules. That’s why they don’t care when women die as a result of abortion bans. They see it merely as cause and effect. Anyone suffering must have brought it upon themselves.
A terrifying fact in the current climate crisis is that Christian fundamentalists don’t care about the environment. They view natural resources as theirs for the taking. They welcome the end times and look forward to the burning of the earth as a precursor to the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. Because Jesus is coming soon, it’s pointless to invest in “earthly things” or plan many years ahead. Besides, God will supernaturally stop the earth from being destroyed before “his perfect timing”. But the fact remains that the eventual destruction of the whole world is a pillar of their theology and they see no reason to try to stop it. Doing so is blasphemous, “worshipping creation instead of creator”. Besides, the environmental suffering hasn’t yet affected their elite Christian circles enough to give it a second thought.
Christian fundamentalists believe it is their God-given calling and command to dominate and rule the world, transforming it into a religious theocracy where all people live in compliance. They view themselves as “God’s hands and feet” whose job it is to carry out divine justice as they see fit. This sets up a superiority complex with Christians at the top and everyone else under their thumb. Anyone who dares to challenge Christian leadership should expect to be conquered and forced into obedience. Christian fundamentalists believe they will be rewarded with riches and happiness both on earth and in heaven if they do this. And believe me, they are working hard toward that goal right now.
The Republican Party and the Christian Nationalist movement are well aware that religious brainwashing and the fear of God produces the most loyal and passionate followers. Working hand-in-hand to climb to the top of a government and weaken a democracy, these groups know they need a lot of people on their side, and what better way than using religion? Conservative power mongers have been laying the groundwork behind the scenes for decades now by infiltrating American homes with extreme doctrines and curriculums like Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and Gary Ezzo’s Growing Kids God’s Way. They have a long history of influencing politics in their favor using Christianity as a distraction and disguise and are now making unprecedented headway. A few examples of current events they laid the groundwork for is the overturning Roe v Wade and “Don’t Say Gay” laws. The upcoming November 2024 election is one of the most critical steps in their grand plan.
If religious conservatives and the GOP continue to be successful placing their proponents in crucial roles from local government all the way up to the federal level and elect a man who has openly supported attempts at overthrowing a democracy, the United States and the entire globe will be in a very dangerous place. Donald Trump is a felon and a rapist. He waves the Bible around for his political gain. He has been recorded publicly saying when he becomes president it won’t be necessary to vote anymore and he proudly promises he will replace thousands of government employees with his own picks. He incites violence toward women and people of color and he is the chosen one of the extremist Christian Nationalist movement. Trump is the kingpin for putting Project 2025 firmly in pace and his name is mentioned more than 300 times in the official document. If successful, millions of people will suffer, experience trauma and die. The “outside world” won’t exist anymore. Christian extremism will be the only reality. They’ve already told us their plans – demolish no-fault divorce, abolish IVF and contraceptives, remove a woman’s right to vote by establishing “head of family” laws, lower the age of consent for marriage, strip away the government’s ability to establish environmental protections and much more. Their plan is power and they don’t care who it hurts. This is only the beginning – we need to believe them when they tell us who they are. We must stop this.
Vote Blue on every ticket this November. Elect Harris Walz 2024.
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I see… They see…
I see innocent blue eyes. They see dollar signs.
I see a child full of wonder. They see a future cult member.
I see a strong woman in the making. They see free labor for the taking.
I see a toddler communicating her needs. They see a rebel committing sinful deeds.
I see a confident little girl – the life of the party. They see a will to be broken, a threat to the patriarchy.
I will never take my daughter to church. Why? I like who I see better.