I was going to leave this story alone as it seemed to be a tempest in a teapot, but then the aforementioned TFE (see previous post) sent me this interesting link to Christianity Today's blog discussing it. It seems many evangelical Churches are opting not to meet on Christmas Day this year. When I first saw this covered in the Washington Times, I thought it was strange on two counts: seems cheap to begrudge the Savior an hour of your time if you really worship him; and everyone knows there are folks who only come to Church at Christmas & Easter --whatever happened to zeal for souls? But then the WaTi story made it clear those Churches were doing Christmas Eve vigils, so -- big whoop.
But then I took a look at all the links at the CT blog, and found the two big reasons given are: Christmas is a pagan holiday, anyway (um, so you keep the pagan part of the celebration and skip Church? After all, there's no story about Christians boycotting Christmas trees). And the other reason --which seems sensible-- is to allow pastors and their families to spend the day with their families. See why we need celibate priests? No conflict between feeding the souls of the people with the Blessed Sacrament and being there as the kids open their stockings.
