By Linda Bowles, Creators Syndicate, Inc.

February 1995 – Christmas is the day on which Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. For many believers, that holy day nearly 2,000 years ago is easily the most significant day in the history of the human race.

There is nothing complicated about the reason.

They called Him Jesus, which in Hebrew means “Jehovah saves.” His title was “Immanuel,” which being interpreted is “God with us.”

Therein is the essence of Christianity. The Creator came to live among us, gather our sins unto Himself and die in atonement for them. He who created us into this life promises to create us again, perfected, into life eternal, making sense of it all.

THAT’S WHAT THE celebration is all about. It’s enough to make someone want to shout “Hallelujah!”

Christians are not popular in America these days. Jesus was not a very popular figure either, particularly toward the last few years of the time He spent on Earth. His message threatened too many people, just as it does today.

He was the Truth they feared. His presence gave the lie to the self-serving illusions around which they had built their lives. He was the Light that illumined dark corners and recesses, exposing the black sins they sought to hide.

He was the pure mirror that reflected back to them the image of the evil they had become. His very existence was a threat to their lifestyles and their rationalizations. They could not change or corrupt Him, so they killed Him.

It was all said in John 3 :19-20: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”

Centuries have passed. Nothing has changed. They are still trying to kill Him. The fear, even the loathing, of His message is why the celebration of Christmas gets more pagan each succeeding year.

The United States of America is no longer a Christian nation, or even a religious one. A massive assault on the religious community is rapidly taking on the ugly character of open religious persecution.

Religious speech is routinely censored. The Creator of the universe has been excommunicated from the mainstream of American life. He is tolerated – as long as He stays in His place. Religious apartheid is official U.S. policy.

We are treated to the ridiculous spectacle of missionary churches trying to get Bibles to foreign lands when they can’t get them into the schoolhouse on the next block.

THOSE WITH THE least understanding are always first in line to accuse Christians of being intolerant and judgmental. The fact is, no people in the world are more self-effacing than Christians. They are much more inclined to fault themselves rather than others.

Christians have accepted their own insufficiency. They know they are flawed and desperately in need of redemption. They are trying hard to do better. They are not trying to have their sins declared virtues. They seek to have their sins forgiven, not approved.

The sophisticate makes fun of religion and religious people, but if his or her car broke down at night on the other side of town, in a strange neighborhood, he or she would, given the alternatives, be thrilled if the first to come by was a born-again Christian.

Despite all the calumny and harassment, Christians are generally happy, well adjusted and uniquely unconfused about the purpose of life.

Christians are not confounded by arrogant intellectual elitism that asserts that human existence is a meaningless event in an unending, mindless flow of meaningless events. They are unimpressed by the pompous, humanistic idea that we are born out of nothingness, to live and die, only to disappear back into nothingness.

Christians know this kind of thinking makes absolutely no sense at all. They see this dark rhetoric for what it is: the verbal flailings of disoriented and frightened people who do not have philosophic handles on themselves or the universe in which they live.

Christians believe there are no throw-aways in life – everything matters. Nothing is insignificant, and nothing is lost: the faded faces of the beloved dead, the sad memories of the happy days, the hurt that went unkissed, the unphotographed act of bravery, the fallen sparrow. None of these are forgotten – none are cast away as trivial or meaningless. All are forever important.

In the course of time, with the perspective of eternity, everything is reconciled, every detail attended, every wrong righted, every kindness thanked, every wound healed, every love requited, every sin atoned, every life vindicated, every loss recovered, every loved one found.

LIFE IS NOT JUST some kind of glorious accident ... the universe is rational.

It’s enough to make someone want to shout “Hallelujah!”