It’s Christmastime, and you can feel the shift in the air.
Something has changed in the nation’s mood. People smile more easily. Familiar music returns. And — quietly but unmistakably — you can say “Merry Christmas” again without apologizing for it. The president of the United States quotes the Gospel of John when he speaks about Jesus.
Christians need to face a hard truth: The truce was a mistake.
For a few short weeks, Americans remember what this season is actually about. Not a generic winter festival. Not a vague celebration of “light” or “togetherness.” But the birth of Jesus Christ — a real event in history that changed everything.
For centuries, Christians have marked this season to reflect on the incarnation of the Son of God. “Christ is the reason for the season” is not a slogan; it is a confession. God entered history. He took on flesh. He came to save sinners. Christianity is not built on myth or metaphor but on eyewitness testimony to what actually happened.
America is now remembering — haltingly, imperfectly — the central role of Christ in its own history. That recovery follows decades of effort by atheists and secular ideologues to banish Christ from the public square. Unfortunately, Christians largely agreed to the truce that made this possible. They kept their faith private while Marxists were happy to occupy public education.
In the 1960s, American Christians accepted what amounted to a truce. I half-jokingly call it the Madalyn Murray O’Hair deal. The now largely forgotten atheist activist sued to remove prayer and biblical instruction from public schools. Christians acquiesced. Public education, they were told, would be “neutral.” Religion would be kept out. Faith would be private.
Christians kept their side of the deal.
The Marxists did not — because they never agreed to one. They announced their intentions openly. They promised to march through the institutions, and they did. Universities filled with faculty who identify as left or far left and who teach Marxist frameworks as settled truth.
Today, it is easier to find a committed Marxist on campus than a practicing Christian.
For 60 years, Marxist philosophy crept into K-12 education and then saturated higher education. What was once smuggled in under euphemism is now proudly declared. Professors announce their ideology on syllabi and use taxpayer dollars to teach students that America is structurally racist and that “whiteness” is a form of oppression.
There was never neutrality. There was only a vacuum — and Marxism rushed in to fill it.
I saw this emptiness firsthand on my own campus at Arizona State University.
At ASU’s West Valley campus, administrators recently installed a “winter wonderland” display. Not Christmas lights — “winter” lights. Decorations carefully stripped of any reference to Christ. The existential meaninglessness was almost overwhelming.
Lights were strung up to flicker briefly in the darkness before being taken down and discarded. What did it mean? What did it point to beyond itself?
Or, as Hemingway wrote, was it simply nada y pues nada y pues nada — nothing, and then nothing, and then nothing?
This is what happens when you preserve form while evacuating content. Ritual without meaning. Celebration without hope. Light without truth.
Christmas is the opposite of that.
Christmas does not offer a vague lesson about darkness giving way to light. It proclaims that Jesus Christ is the light of the world. It is not a symbolic story to be endlessly reinterpreted but a declaration that Christ was born in history, of a virgin, in fulfillment of prophecy, to redeem a fallen world.
That is why efforts to drain Christmas of its meaning always feel strained. When leftists substitute “winter celebrations” and “seasonal observances,” they do not offer neutrality. They offer emptiness — sometimes dressed up as inclusion, sometimes as bureaucracy, sometimes as pagan revivalism. Light shows without the Logos. Rituals without redemption.
Christians need to face a hard truth: The truce was a mistake.
There is no neutral education. There never has been. Every curriculum conveys values. Every institution forms souls. The only question is whether students will be formed in the light of Christ or in the ideology of those who openly despise Him.
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Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Christmas exposes the lie of neutrality. It reminds us that history has meaning, that truth entered the world, and that human beings answer to something higher than administrative guidelines or ideological fashion.
So this year, I am not whispering, “Happy Holidays.” I am saying, “Merry Christmas” — to students, to colleagues, to anyone who will hear it.
Parents and students should remember something crucial: Universities answer to you. You are not passive consumers. You set expectations. You decide what kind of formation is acceptable.
When you see your professors, say, “Merry Christmas.” Say it cheerfully. Say it unapologetically. What you are affirming is not sentiment but truth: that Christ came into the world, and no amount of bureaucratic rebranding can erase Him.
The lights will flicker and fade. Christ will not.
Merry Christmas.
