Christmas in the Crosshairs

Christmas in the Crosshairs
Two Thousand Years of Denouncing and Defending the World’s Most Celebrated Holiday
by Gerry Bowler — also, father of Kate Bowler
Published 2017 by Oxford University Press
I began reading in early 2017 and finally finished in November 2018.

I learned about “Santa” when I was about 8 years old from the grandson of dear family friends. It tore me up, yet the mystery of the season still enamored me. When I became an adult raising kids, pressures externally and internally to make Christmas special and still keep the “Reason for the Season” was often emotionally debilitating, definitely complicated, gut punchingly false, yet somehow still joyous. Often in silence, I questioned everything about the season in the Church and in the commercialized societies in which we lived.

I first read an essay from Christmas in the Crosshairs in the Wall Street Journal. When I read the essay… I was sure that I needed to read the book. I’m glad I read it, but it’s also strongly academic! Consequently, I found myself really slogging through portions of it, thus the reason it took so long to read. This said… the historicity of this book is profound. It absolutely amazed me and it angered me. However, I no longer feel so alone knowing that this topic has been an issue since just past the time Jesus walked the earth. The book grieves me too because it provides the research that describes how both the the State and the Church have manipulated “Christmas” and “Christ” throughout the centuries to control the masses, and Capitalism has also aided and abetted both and profited in great proportions along the way.

For a long time, I have wanted an answer to - what to do with the month of December and Christmas - because so much of how the Season is celebrated really doesn’t make sense to me. For me, December and Christmas have become an evolving experience with a revolving door that spins through the innocent past of my youth, onto how our culture and churches snag the season to shape their stories, and into the ever changing mystery of tomorrow… and that’s where I am today.