The War on Christmas was started in 1550... by the Protestants.

[DetlefK]

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/christianitys-own-war-on-christmas/

Early worship of Jesus focused not on the nativity story but the crucifixion and resurrection. In fact, the Virgin Birth narrative is now considered a late addition to the gospels, one that fused ancient Sumerian mythic tropes, Hebrew tropes and cult of virginity, and the Greco-Roman belief that an extraordinary man must have an extraordinary birth. In the third century, the Church Patriarch Origin wrote a list of Christian holy days that did not include Christmas, suggesting that the holiday hadn’t yet emerged during his time.

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Christianity spread in part by embracing a practice called “syncretism,” in which local traditions and religions were simply absorbed and reinterpreted within the Christian tradition.

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Pagan temples became churches, indigenous gods became saints, and pagan festival days got repurposed as Christian holy days. The earliest existing documentation of December 25 as Christmas derives from the fourth century and is tied closely with the merger between Christianity and imperial Rome. Over time, Christmas came to rival Easter in the Catholic tradition, and the cult of Mary as the most perfect of all perfect virgins rose to rival the Trinity.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the strongest and most vociferous backlash against Christmas came from Protestant reformers who rejected all things Roman Catholic (except, ironically, the Bible itself, which they substituted for the very hierarchy that had compiled it.)

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Calvin laid out a concept that later theologians called the regulative principle of worship, meaning that the only valid forms of worship are those laid out in the Bible. Christmas doesn’t meet this bar. In 1550, under his influence, authorities in Geneva issued an edict banning “all festivals, with the exception of Sundays, which God had ordained. ”

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As the Reformation spread to the British Isles, the Presbyterian church took up the case against Catholic holidays.

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In 1647, the British Parliament outlawed Christmas and other holiday festivals.

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American children are taught that the Pilgrims traveled from England in the Mayflower seeking religious freedom, but the freedom to celebrate Christmas was apparently outside the range of acceptable practice for the Plymouth Rock colony. In 1621, new arrivals had to be brought into line:

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In 1871, famed Baptist evangelist Charles H. Spurgeon used his time in the pulpit on December 24 to exhort his flock against observing Christmas:

“We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas: first, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be said or sung in Latin or in English; and, secondly, because we find no scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and, consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority.”

[Vogon_Glory]

1. And Yet Religious Conservatives and Evangelical Fundies Are Told That The War On Christmas

was started by "liberals" and they choose to take the right-wing propagandizing with thoughtless, wide-eyed credulity.

Trusting bunch, aren't they?

[Turbineguy]

2. So Christmas is about

crass commercialism after all....

Profit beats God every time. Which may be why republicans are so conflicted.

[DetlefK]

3. Not necessarily commercialism. Christmas is whatever people want it to be.

[Turbineguy]

4. Good point.

It can be something nice for some people. Which we like.

And it can be a war for others. Which they like.

[trotsky]

5. Considering its origins as a pagan winter celebration...

the "War on Christmas" was started by the first Christians who co-opted it for their religion to more easily convert the heathens.