One of the problems with Christianity in the West (which Christians tend to be blind to but which non-Christians can see all-too-clearly) is the extent to which Christianity and Christian practices may be forced on others. In the past that force was overt and sometimes violent; in the present the force occurs through cultural, political, and peer pressure.
Regardless of the format, though, the presence of force is a good way to make people view Christianity more negatively.
PsiCop writes:
It may not be fair to say that "Christmas was forced on us by force of arms," however, Christianity certainly was. It was, for example, forced on the Saxons by Charlemagne, and it was forced on the Balts by the Teutonic Knights ... to use just two examples I might cite.
Heck, Christians have even been known to use force to make other types of Christians become their type of Christian.
The cold fact is that, for most of its history, Christianity has never been keen on living peacefully with non-Christians or with Christians who aren't quite like them. During the Enlightenment that began to change.
But here in the US, Christian Nationers are steering Christianity back to its old habit of refusing to accept that there are non-Christians in the world. And in fact, a lot of them are using Christmas as a wedge issue in order to accomplish it.
[original post]
There are two prongs in how Christmas is being used by Christian Nationalists. The first is to define Christmas in narrow way, excluding both modern secular elements as well as older Christian perspectives that treated Christmas as a minor holiday. In effect, Christian Nationalists want to benefit from how the secularization of Christmas made it a major holiday then remove those secular elements as if they didn't belong -- but not the commercial elements, which are also secular. It's a goal with too many internal contradictions to succeed.
The second prong is to insist that while Christmas must be defined according to their narrow Christian standards, it's also a holiday that is part of the historical, cultural, and even political fabric of America and thus one which everyone must accommodate.
They don't demand that everyone celebrate it, which would be a step too far even for them (right now, at least). Instead, they just insist that everyone accommodate it -- which is to say, everyone must acknowledge how Christmas dominates the cultural, political, and social landscape of the nation at this time of year.
This means that people must accept that it's a "national" holiday which defines how shopping is done, controls what is seen on TV or in the movies, dominates the news, and requires almost everything be closed on certain days. People must not, however, demand anything remotely similar for their own holidays -- only a narrow Christian version of Christmas is accorded any of this.
Thus if people want to "belong" and "take part" in something fundamental to the national culture and which will be accommodated by government, employers, neighbors, etc., they must either also adopt a narrow Christian version of Christmas or they must butcher one of their own holidays in order to make it a pale image of Christmas.
Either way, the superiority and dominance of a narrow version of Christianity is reaffirmed. And that's one of the basic goals of Christian Nationalists.
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