So here’s my annual pet peeve: Christians freaking out on non-Christians over the whole ‘Happy Holidays’ vs. ‘Merry Christmas’ greeting debate. It never fails, some time in November and lasting through Christmas, Twitter, Facebook, and every other social media outlet starts lighting up with impassioned rants about how wrong it is to take Christ out of Christmas, and everyone is so worried about offending the non-Christians, but no one cares about offending all the Christians.

I guess what concerns me is that for many who don’t follow Christ, the core message they will hear is that they are the enemy for trying to remove Christ from Christmas, ‘the holiday dedicated to His birth’ (actually, not his actual birth, a date actually celebrated for other reasons previously, and with many pagan symbolism embraced such as the Christmas tree). It’s a combative stance demanding others to conform to a belief they don’t share. It’s also exactly the kind of thing that results in 87% of the unchurched in America thinking Christians are judgmental.

My point? Let’s use our relational credit online and in person for something of actual value: the incredible story of a loving God not demanding that we go to Him, but instead coming to us, sacrificing everything even to the point of His life, for us. A holiday greeting is a non-issue. The Christmas story? It’s the most important one ever told and this is the time of year people are more inclined to hear it.