Christmas...

I really liked the beginning of Ross Douthat's column of today:

Christmas is hard for everyone. But it’s particularly hard for people who actually believe in it.

In a sense, of course, there’s no better time to be a Christian than the first 25 days of December. But this is also the season when American Christians can feel most embattled. Their piety is overshadowed by materialist ticky-tack. Their great feast is compromised by Christmukkwanzaa multiculturalism. And the once-a-year churchgoers crowding the pews beside them are a reminder of how many Americans regard religion as just another form of midwinter entertainment, wedged in between “The Nutcracker” and “Miracle on 34th Street.”

These anxieties can be overdrawn, and they’re frequently turned to cynical purposes. (Think of the annual “war on Christmas” drumbeat, or last week’s complaints from Republican senators about the supposed “sacrilege” of keeping Congress in session through the holiday.) But they also reflect the peculiar and complicated status of Christian faith in American life. Depending on the angle you take, Christianity is either dominant or under siege, ubiquitous or marginal, the strongest religion in the country or a waning and increasingly archaic faith.


He then goes on to review two new books about the supposed decline of Christianity.  I won't comment on whether that's happening or not.  While sad on the surface, there may some silver lining in the decline of the Christian underpinning of Western culture.  Christianity, I think, thrives as a persecuted minority.  Look at how well, and fast, the religion seized the world in the first two centuries, going from near extinction to world domination.  Of course, that would subside, and Islam would nearly do the same thing several centuries later, but a de-Christianized culture could mean a more virile practice of the faith.