Sunday is Christmas. Christians worldwide will honor their Lord and Savior today as they worship him in church and also as they celebrate his birthday. And, as one who strongly believes that Christmas is a major part of America’s culture past and present, let me wish ya’ll a very Merry Christmas.

The impact that Christ and his teachings had on the Founding Fathers is indisputable. His influence in the Founder’s lives led to the creation of a new nation of free men and women based upon those principles of freedom and liberty they found in His handbook of liberty, their Bibles. What a gift to the world! The Founders then imbedded those principles into America’s foundational documents, documents that not only created America but “proclaimed liberty” (Lev. 25:10) to all who would embrace it and defend those principles wherever tyranny threatened to destroy those liberties.

Over the past 60 years I have read His handbook of liberty many times, and each time I read it my understanding of those principles of liberty, freedom and wisdom grows. And each time I read this handbook I better understand, as did the Founders, Abraham’s covenant role; Moses’ teachings on the law, both spiritual and secular, for governing mankind’s relationships with God, self, family and neighbors, as in community; Amos’ council in 3:7; the prophetic words of Isaiah; Paul’s clarifying reference of the Godhead; Paul’s efforts to describe the heavens; James’ reference to “the perfect law of liberty;” John’s visionary Revelations; and how Jesus’ movement was hindered from ‘within’ by Judas.

But as I ponder the life and teachings of Christ, my soul sorrows as I observe the continuing efforts of Lucifer using secularism and progressives to destroy the role of Christianity and Christmas in America, the very source of America’s ethics, charity and decency, the very source of our liberties and the source of Jefferson’s light and immense insights and principles he implanted in the Declaration of Independence — the document that unleashed a pent-up desire for freedom that resides in the bosom of every human being regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof. The light and spirit of Christ that Jefferson embedded in his document swept the world like a wildfire.

But Christmas is far more than a birthday party of a mere human being, as atheists would have Christians believe. It is the day the Christian world remembers the birth of their Prince of Peace, the creator of the world, the supreme judge of the world, and the only true source of peace in a world now turning upside down. And with the birth of that Christ child came the light of eternal truth to the whole world, a light that Lucifer wants to snuff out to return the world to the darkness that covered the Earth at the time of his birth.

I am always intrigued by John the Revelator’s words in chapter 12 of his book. John writes about a “war in heaven,” a war led by Michael and his angels on one side and the dragon, called Satan and/or Devil, “which deceiveth the whole world,” and his angels on the other side. Michael, a mighty general and follower of Christ, won and cast Satan “out into the earth” where Satan has continued that war for the souls of mankind. And as the time for the promised return of that Christ child draws near, the intensity of that war for the soul of man increases. Satan “knoweth that he hath but a short time” and has intensified his efforts to win converts to his side. In recent years, with the help of secularists and progressives, his success rate of conversion has increased.

Every parent, Christian or non-Christian, who has witnessed the miracle of Christmas through the eyes of their children is grateful for the joy it brings into the children’s lives, to see their anticipation, to see them forget self and reach out to siblings and parents, learning to give of themselves rather than thinking of themselves. What a gift!

And that is what Christmas is, a gift. It is the day the Christian world celebrates the birth of God’s only begotten son, the Christ child, God’s gift to all mankind that through his son all will have the opportunity to return, after their mortal journey, into His presence. A gift indeed!

Remember, Sunday is more than a “Happy Holiday,” it’s God’s gift to you. It’s “Merry Christmas!”

Donald Conkey is a retired agricultural economist in Woodstock.