No, not presents.  Not made up holidays.  Not Turducken.

Reprinted Annually
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Partially reprinted from 2006
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Secularists, Culturalists, Diversity advocates and other ignorant or willfully dishonest folks will disagree.  Those of other faith traditions often celebrate it but not for its real reason which they are prohibited from believing.  Commercialists don't care about the real reason.  Politicians want to posture about it while avoiding or politicizing the real reason.  However the Christmas season HAS A REAL REASON.  One to benefit all mankind that have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

Secularists hate it and fight and litigate against it.  The lost reject it and get defensive when we promote it.  The Atheist rejects it by means of their own religions of evolution and antitheist philosophy.  However most of them welcome it and "celebrate" it, look forward to it and partake in the frenzied materialist and secular parts of it.  They even will be caught saying things like "peace on earth" and "good will toward men" (excuse me, persons).

It is Christmas.  Regardless of the arguments that may distract people from the true reason for Christmas.  The reason is Jesus, the Christ Child, the prophesied Savior of humanity.  His birth, of a virgin in Bethlehem some 2000 years ago is the reason for the season.  Our Redeemer's birth the hope of mankind, the Way, the Truth and the Light.  God's gift to mankind (excuse me, humankind).

Businesses won't mention it, Schools and "Public" entities won't acknowledge it and antichristian attack the faith component of it.  Yet they all want it.  They all set aside time for sales, activities and diatribes about it.  Find the business that doesn't realize a large portion of revenue from it.  Find a public or private entity that doesn't give time off for it, have parties specifically timed to coincide with it and often exchange gifts or grant pecuniary compensation during it.  Find secular/humanist/atheist activists who don't use it to gain notoriety to their causes from it (prior to going home to some sort of "celebration" of it).  In the midst of denying it, obfuscating it or attacking it, nearly everyone acknowledges and celebrates it.

Christ, the King, born in Bethlehem that he might minister to this world before freely going to the Cross to die that our fallen human sins might be forgiven by God's grace.  Holding forth the promise of eternal life for those who believe in his undeniable Good News.  Foretold, fulfilled and granted to an undeserving humanity.  Reinforcement of the most powerful, compelling and impactful moral code ever presented to man for his betterment.  Realization of man's inability to comply with "Law", a loving gracious God sent his Son to this world to be born of Mary and live as a man shining in sinless perfection before sacrificing himself to our undeserving benefit of eternal life.

This IS the reason for the Season, regardless of trees, presents, turkeys and family reunions.  Jesus Christ, Son of God, glorious and warranting our praise, instilling joy to a world believing and unbelieving during this season celebrating the Christ Child's birth.

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with peace.  I invite you to see the Good News in Luke and Matthew.

Why are 20 percent of the population liberal?  Why does the President state with surety that "only the government" can solve economic problems?  Health care coverage disparities?  Save the environment?  It is because he belongs to a segment of the dependency mass.

Where comes this confidence in government.  Even supposed conservatives "admit the need" for "government action" on a plethora of issues.  They, conservative and liberal alike, disregard any mention of such action being outside the scope and authority of Federal Government.  Government programs have consistently failed since the depression.  The New Deal failed, the "War on Poverty" failed.  Medicare is a mess that's getting worse, as is Social (in)Security.  Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Let's look at the dependency mass that perpetuates this fantasy of government goodness.

The dependency mass includes the 20 percent identified above, the leftist collectivist politicians who claim to represent them and another, difficult to size group of "moderate" or "independent" types.  Within this mass there are several types.

The Professional Victims: This is a very diverse group who choose to divide rather than unite America.  They are incapable of seeing "Americans" but must subcategorize them in to victim groups.  Their aim is to gain power, influence and money for themselves while claiming to be "protecting" those they identify as "oppressed".  Oppression in the U.S. only exists in the fevered imaginations of these professional victims and their organizers.  One benefit of modern American culture is that everyone realizes that liberty is for everyone and that success is available to ANYONE willing to work hard for it.  Unless of course the Sheople herders of the dependency mass complete their collectivization of America.  Perhaps if these professional victims didn't perpetuate racism (and all other "isms") and a victim mentality in their sheople the U.S would get even better.  But that would eliminate their true purpose, to gain power, influence and money.

The trained dependents:  This is a group that through the cultural changes and the liberal's control of public schools and academia have come to believe that the government's role is to provide them with things.  Money, houses, health care, jobs.  They believe they are entitled to these things for no reason other than that they want them provided.

The emotional idealists: Deciding based on feeling good.  The donor base of the donkey party.  They struggle with guilt at their own fortune, afforded them by freedom.  They think that it is only right and good that others be required to give, by coercion, to "those in need"as deemed by the idealist.  They believe that government is good and that people are inherently good.  Their morals are relative.  Things are moral if it feels emotionally good to them.  Freedom is just a smoke screen for "mean" or "selfish" people. All people are entitled to whatever wish or believe they need.  All should be required to provide it.  Earning things, respect, goods, status is just a concept used by "cruel" people.  The greatest feature of this type is their all consuming self-centeredness.  All things must work in a way that allows them to feel good about themselves.

Lazy People: Both the intellectually lazy who "believe things" just because considering another view involves intellectual effort.  They are perfectly willing to latch on to what "seems right" rather than think things through.  Academia strives to turn out such "thinkers" whether consciously or because the "instructors" are such themselves.  We mustn't forget the physically lazy who are more than willing to take hand outs and "programs" rather than better themselves by individual effort.  Doing so would take away from their video game and tv time.  Heaven forbid that work be required to get a check. 

Selfish People:  Many of the lazy, above, fit here too.  As do many in the other groupings.  Selfishness and greed are powerful emotional  motivators. I've heard people who receive government issued freebies ("programs", "benefits", checks) refer to them as "their" money.  Pontificate loudly on their "right" to them.  Fight vigorously against any idea or plan to "take away my" *insert free anything here*.  A humorous interview in Detroit was with some people who lined up for hours to get some "Obama money".  They didn't know or care where it came from ("Obama's stash"?!?).  Such gross ignorance and crass selfishness aren't unique, it is common.

Envious People:  Envy is another powerful emotion that causes liberal people to adopt and support collectivist government as needful and good.  To those who haven't achieved at the same level as others don't seek to raise themselves but to tear down those who have.  A term they love is "raise all boats" not caring that such attempts sink more boats than are raised.  To these types, achievers are "greedy", "mean" and "selfish".  They can't make a distinction between the ambition and self-interest of achievers and prefer to assign their own envious selfishness.  The envious are often lazy, make or made poor choices and ignorant of those things which achievers excel at.  Rather than achieve they prefer to dislike and attack those more successful than they have chosen to be.

Intellectual Elitists: A driving force of liberal and socialist collectivism.  There are people of all political stripes who suffer from this but it is pervasively liberal in academia and government and often used as political justification.  "We just know better than you" is the hallmark of such elitists.  They live in environments that reinforce and perpetuate their elitism.  When confronted with this concept the liberals defend their elitism by saying "I should disregard people who do know better" (than you)?  They continually claim to have "facts and knowledge" that non-liberals don't possess to justify their emotion based ideologies.  Intellectual arrogance is part and parcel to these types.

Collectivist Rulers:  Drawn from the intellectual elitists, the emotional idealists and just plain megalomaniac politicians (note: these types of politicians accrue to conservative as well as liberal groupings.  It only depends on what they see as the path to power).  Collectivist politicians often begin as any of the other groupings or some combination.  They tend however to be focused on an eye for the main chance.  The acquisition of power and the perks of power.  The reinforcement of their conviction that they know better and above all that the people of "flyover" country "clinging to their guns and bibles" truly need the caring knowledgeable control of such as themselves.

Such characteristics breed the condescending attitudes of collectivists, fuel their arrogance and pump up their hubris.

The only solution to problems is less Federal Government.  Uncle Sugar actually acting within its enumerated powers.  20 percent claim to be "liberal", unfortunately their political mass is swelled by folks such as those above.  We all suffer from such tendencies as we are not "inherently good", rather failed creatures with the ability to improve ourselves.  By our OWN EFFORTS not by the "programs" of elitists who wish to penalize success and empower only themselves.

Sally Morem has views worth reading.  Here is one her recent essays.  A fine contributor to our network and to maintaining American Freedom.  See the original post here on Scribd.

Take up America’s Torch
By Which We Remember December 7 and September 11
By Sally Morem
In Flanders’ fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: And in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly,
Scarce heard amidst the guns below.
We are the dead.
Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved and now we lie
In Flanders’ fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe,
To you from failing hands we throw
The Torch—be yours to hold it high;
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders’ fields.

Canadian Colonel John McCrae left us with this eloquent plea for the
defense of the free West, a very appropriate thing to ponder on the
anniversaries of Pearl Harbor and the attacks on New York and Washington,
DC. His poem, In Flanders’ Fields, depicted an image of cemeteries filled
dead Canadians, Englishmen, Frenchmen and Americans, buried under the
battlegrounds of World War I in Europe. The spirits of these dead ask us in
the poem to continue their brave efforts to defend freedom from the
depredations of tyranny. Perhaps they knew that the ‘war to end all wars’
wouldn’t.

Americans did what had to be done. After the sudden blows our forces
suffered in Hawaii and those we suffered later in the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, we regrouped, struggled, and finally triumphed.
But, there are those who believe that Flanders’ Field was and is too high a
price to pay for freedom. They feel that peace should be our only concern.
Pacifists fear the results of war far more than the devastating effects
surrender would have on us. They don’t realize that appeasement to the
Kaisers, the Hitlers, the Tojos, the Stalins, and the bin Ladens would never
bring peace, but would instead lead to waves of future wars, endless wars of
oppression conducted by power-hungry tyrants, egged on by the weakness
displayed by their pacifist enemies.

The dictionary defines the pacifist as one who is in opposition to war or
violence as a means of settling disputes and who specifically refuses to bear
arms on moral or religious grounds. By so doing, he hopes to bring about a
permanent peace.
Unfortunately, this could never happen through unilateral disarmament. If a
pacific society were somehow established, its internal order would soon
break down under the pressure of criminal acts and outside aggression.
Pacifism is therefore an unstable strategy for any society to undertake. It, by
definition, cannot cope with violent domestic or foreign acts. Survivors
would have to cease acting as pacifists in short order. Or there would be no
survivors left to sweep up the shrapnel and put out the fires.
But, how can we preserve freedom and yet avoid future Flanders’ fields?
Perhaps we can’t. The military option is simply too attractive to too many
people. A show of force really works. People see the guns, the tanks, the
battleships, the bombers, and the soldiers…then they do what they are told
to do. They surrender. They give their conquerors anything they demand.
In any effort to ease the danger of war, certain facts of life must be attended
to. The first thing we must realize is that this world is filled with billions of
people who organize themselves into millions of groups, instantiating at
least as many differing dreams and goals and ideals. Not all of these groups
co-exist peaceably nor do they all conduct their affairs in an honorable
manner. In such a situation, conflict becomes unavoidable.
Any proposal for the demilitarization of the world must come to grips with
the harsh reality of human nature reflected in the operation of human
leadership of groups: There will always be leaders who will lie, cheat,
scheme, and murder to get their own way within their group and against
other groups. They will not be dissuaded by sweet talk of human love and
brotherhood.

Secondly, we must remember that human beings are just as capable of
cooperating with one another as they are of fighting. We see this every day
in peace as our armies and police keep the bad guys at bay, permitting us to
trade and associate in friendship, without threats or coercion.
Ironically enough, war itself illustrates the power of human cooperation.
While soldiers fight enemy soldiers on the battlefield, they also obey their
superior officers, protect one another, move the wounded to safety, and
move supplies to the front in an orderly fashion. War is organized conflict,
with emphasis on the adjective organized. We see the human capacity for
both beastliness and heroism magnified on the battlefield. Perhaps this is
why some of our most powerful stories are war stories.

The talent for cooperation is inherently human. Parents love, nurture and
protect their children. Business associates work together for their mutual
profit. People risk their lives to save others from the perils of fire and storm.
Any truly robust human culture dedicated to the preservation of peace must
allow human cooperation to flower naturally; it must not be forced.
Cooperation is inherently a voluntary act. A dictatorship enforcing
cooperation would be (and is) as counterproductive as a pacifist society
attempting to enforce peace.

From these two points we can deduce the following with reasonable
certainty: There can be no peace without freedom. Ever. Freedom is the
stuff of peace. Why? Because freedom is the stuff of a truly human life.
Cooperation may flourish in many different types of societies and conflict
may be bent to more positive ends through the workings of ancient
traditions, but only in societies where individual rights and responsibilities
are recognized as inviolable can such societies achieve a high level of trust
between large numbers of people, most of whom will never meet one
another. Freedom, then, has the capacity to engender a level of trust at least
high enough to ease ever-present tensions in very populous societies.
Freedom allows individuals to combine and covenant among themselves
without resort to force or threats of force. No gun to the head nor midnight
knock on the door required. Freedom also permits people to leave that
which they’ve created at any time. The “escape clause” of freedom
encourages both the free flow of commerce and of information and ideas
throughout the world as individuals enter and leave at will.

And by so doing, freedom discourages wars between free peoples. Free
peoples don’t fight one another. They don’t even threaten to fight one
another. Considering the history of armed conflict over the millennia, this is
a highly unusual and desirable situation to be in. If we would truly have
peace among the nations, freedom must be the means of its realization. It’s
the only thing that has ever been found by historians to have such a strong
dampening effect on war.

Albert Einstein was wrong when he said, “The first problem is to do away
with mutual fear and distrust.” These emotions cannot be waved away with
the magic wand of pacifism. The first problem is to do away with systems
and cultures of coercion. And this can only be done by guiding
inexperienced peoples through the process of creating societies of
freedom…all over the world. Maintaining the tender plants of newly
established free societies is a tricky task, but many peoples have already
succeeded in doing so in Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Free America has been a powerful force for peace in the last few decades.
But, it didn’t achieve the stability of the West through the use of lethal force.
It never threatened its allies with the use of tanks and troops if they didn’t
obey American orders. It led its allies by offering its own great strength as a
shield against a common enemy.

It has been said by history commentators that if the two great nuclear powers
who had emerged out of World War II into the Cold War had been
totalitarian, say, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, all of humanity
would’ve been wiped out in a nuclear world war long ago. We only have to
remember what happened when Hitler betrayed the Hitler-Stalin Pact to get
an idea of the truth of this assertion. Thankfully, one of the two
superpowers had been in reality a true democratic republic. America had
been strong enough to enable the West to remain free long enough to outlast
an aggressive, and then a crumbling Soviet Empire.
Let’s consider an alternate historical possibility. If the two superpowers
emerging from the flames of World War II had both been free societies, they
never would have posed a nuclear threat to each other or the world. Wars do
not come about simply by the presence of dangerous weaponry; wars grow
out of the enmity of enemies.

We now have enough experience with a number of paired democratic states
sharing borders to know that they never put their forces on alert against one
another, let alone fire on one another in anger. Americans don’t fear British
or French nukes…with good reason. Our two imaginary democratic
superpowers would’ve acted towards each other much like post-war
Germany, Japan and America had—with peaceable trade and cultural
exchanges instead of ICBMs aimed at one another’s cities.
With all this in mind, America’s duty is clear. We must continue to foster
the development of free societies around the world. We must continue to
protect and defend ourselves and the free world from would-be oppressors.
Sneak attacks on America must never be permitted to happen again. When
we choose to be free, we give America’s Answer, written by R. W. Lillard,
to those who had given their lives for us nearly a century ago:

Rest in peace, ye Flanders dead,
The fight that ye so bravely led
We’ve taken up. And we will keep
True faith with you who lie asleep,
With each a cross to mark his bed,
Where once his own life-blood ran red.
So let your rest be sweet and deep
In Flanders’ field.
Fear not that ye have died for naught,
The Torch ye threw to us we caught,
Ten million hands will hold it high,
And Freedom’s light shall never die!
We’ve learned the lesson that ye taught
In Flanders’ field.

The "hope and change" minions that elected Mr. Obama never seemed too concerned with his background nor his quite extensive history of questionable associations.  He also has quite clearly made his worldview and political aims clear throughout his less than illustrious career.

Bill Long, here on Townhall, has done a yeoman's job and great service to provide thinking Americans with detailed resources to learn about the true Obama yourself.

You can also get excellent resources and opinions on our network.  Participate in maintaining your American Freedom!