One of the long, drawn-out religio-cultural battles in the United States is over Christmas. In fact, it’s a War on Christmas. Conservative and evangelical commentators claim the festival is facing an existential threat, evidenced by city councils’ failure to erect nativity scenes on the front lawns of Democrat-controlled town halls. Worse still is the new secular greeting which substitutes ‘Merry Christmas’ for what was originally intended as a more Jewish-friendly ‘Happy Holidays’. Nowadays, of course, the Jews are the least of the Protestants’ problems, with radicalized Islam and smug atheism providing far greater cause for concern. Merry Christmas, too, is in very real danger. Similar examples abound in Australia (remember Sydney Lord Mayor’s War on Christmas as she too removed religious artifacts from Town Hall) and in Britain (Birmingham’s now defunct ‘Winterval’ has become synonymous with ridiculous attempts to secularize Christmas).

The usual suspects have done what they usually do: protests, placards and – in America, of course – threatened legal action against even the secular parlance. But their real response was to deploy from the evangelical arsenal the trump cards of sentimentality and kitsch.

In his recent book, Homespun Gospel, Todd Brenneman insightfully refers to the ‘triumph of Sentimentality in contemporary evangelicalism.’ And we know what he means. The mainstream media’s reporting on Hillsong, for example, while not always accurate, gets the sentimentality about right.

And it is this sentimentality that in turn drives the Christian Industrial Complex and the kitsch Christian paraphernalia that it most frequently produces. Interestingly, it is not evangelical churches but rather Christian bookshops where such snazzy items as inspirational posters, stationery items, board games, angel figurines, coffee cups emblazoned with pseudo-Christian slogans, and fish shaped mints can be most readily procured. Some bona fide Christian booksellers do exist, but most are essentially vulgar mega-marts, purveying all manner of crap sourced from the length and breadth of evangelicalism. And at Christmas-time hundreds of square metres of floor-space will be consecrated to the sale of just one merchandise category: the Christian Christmas card. For evangelicals, this is the front line of the War on Christmas.

Last Christmas was, to be sure, a bit light on, but most years I receive a sizeable bundle of weird Christian greeting cards. I’d love to be able to report that most are from Hallmark or another greedy commercial outfit that evidently knows nothing about Christmas’ religious significance, however sadly, most are from a growing number of self-identifying Christian publishers.

One adventus horribilis I counted more than fifteen of these gaudy exhortations to put the Christ back into Christmas.’ Then, of course, there’s the perennial and poetic favourite, ‘Jesus: the Reason for the Season.’ It’s as if the entirety of the law and the prophets now depend, not on loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbour as yourself, but on the recital and dissemination of trite epithets. The whole counsel of God now comes to us as baby boomer poetry.

Once upon a time I, too, thought it was self-evident that a Christian would indeed want to put the Christ back into Christmas; now, like a concerned parent, I am rather keener to remove him altogether from the debased and unedifying – not to mention sentimental and kitsch – spectacle that evangelical Christmas has become.

Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan was right when he said ‘the message is the medium,’ and surely it applies most profoundly to Christianity. The stated message of such cards may be the renunciation of consumerism and the centrality of Christ, but the actual message – proclaimed in silly sayings and flashy artwork, before being at least as cleverly marketed at Coca-Cola – is the precise opposite.

I mean, one might think that Christians in their efforts to redeem this holy day (from which, by the way, is where we get the word…wait for it…holiday!) would prefer a more reserved, low-key remembrance of Christmas. Likewise, Christian publishing houses could conceivably devise a less ostentatious way for their customers to convey seasonal felicitations. It could even be said that such humility would be in keeping with the humble circumstances of the birth of the promised Messiah, and the will of God. After all, it was God himself who chose the curious incarnational combination of anonymity and poverty, and who located it in a small backwater town on the Judean plain.

Admittedly, the background music was provided by an angelic ensemble, and the Christ child received homage from some distinguished international guests, but – mercifully – this was no G20. The prevailing tenor of the biblical account of Christmas is one of subdued adoration, befitting the one who ‘did not come to be served, but to give his life as a ransom for many.’ Whatever glory to the Newborn King the herald angels may have sung, the first Christmas was a mostly modest affair. Such is the paradox of Christmas, and indeed of the Christian life. Martin Luther juxtaposed what he called the Theology of Glory with the Theology of the Cross. But however you want to describe it, evangelical kitsch and sentimentality will allow none of it.

Christianity is first and foremost the announcement that sins are forgiven, sinners are counted as righteous, and everlasting life is given, only through Jesus Christ. He is not the Reason for a Season; the Bible teaches that he is the God of creation, the promised Messiah, the Saviour of the world, and the Lord of all. And that he was born in a dirty Palestinian village. To reduce this astounding message – what the herald angels referred to as ‘good news of great joy’ – to a theologically superior salutation and the right kind of greeting card is indeed the triumph of sentimentality and kitsch, and they are the real War on Christmas. Happy holidays!