The cross and its replacement with a dollar sign

The holiday season has officially begun.

Glittering lights hang from every tree and jingles echo down the streets while our nation’s portly men tug on red velvet and fake beards. Tradition once again reigns supreme. Naturally, our media is stoking the flames of the perpetual War on Christmas.

The latest battles in the war are just beginning. Christians will whine that Christ has been removed from Christmas while atheists will shriek that a now secular America is being dominated by the oppressive forces of religion.

Of course, both sides are wrong. Despite the protection of the First Amendment and our increasingly diverse population, the United States is still a Christian nation. From the colonies to today, the majority of Americans have always been Christian. But the Christians are wrong as well.

Christ has been exorcised from Christmas, but this crime can’t be laid at the feet of aggressive atheists or politically correct multiculturalists. The true culprit, as always, is capitalism.

We must remember the true Christ, the righteous rebel who taught a gospel of poverty and love. The images of Christ that we receive from the media, a gentle man hugging children and strolling through beautiful fields, are distortions at best.

At worst, they are heretical propaganda that robs us of Christ’s true message. It was Christ who counseled a rich man to give up all his possessions before warning that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven (Matthew 19:16-24).

It was Christ who flew into a rage and violently expelled the money-changers from the temple of God (John 2:13-16). It was Christ who came to bring not peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34).  In the end, it was Christ who was betrayed for silver before he was tortured and murdered by the agents of wealth and greed (Matthew 26:14-16).

The capitalists want us to forget this message. Under their rule, Christmas has been reduced to a hollow celebration of greed and materialism. They have convinced us the love we feel for one another can be expressed only through expensive gifts. If we celebrate his birth, they want us to do so with electronics and jewelry.

Now, in the midst of the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, when more Americans fall into poverty every day while the rich gleefully stuff their vaults with more treasure, the time has come to reclaim not only Christmas, but our lives.

The capitalists have torn down the cross and put in its place a dollar sign, but this is our holiday, not theirs. We must return to the true teachings of Christ, not the sanitized version the corporate media feeds us. In our souls, we know that love and wealth are not synonymous.

The time has come to pick up the sword and the switch and drive the agents of filth and greed from our land, like Christ before us.

­— atcrane@indiana.edu