Dr Paul Allen

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” has been seen countless times on three continents by Polish grandparents and Japanese schoolchildren. It remains evergreen and universal — just like the Saviour Linus describes in his simple recitation of the Nativity as it appears in Luke’s Gospel.  However, that citing of Scripture did not easily pass the cynicism and cowardly cultural gatekeepers of American network television when Charles Schulz and his production team offered the first of what became many Peanuts specials to CBS executives in December of 1965.  In fact, even before those suits tried to remove mentioning Christ from this Christmas show, Schulz’s two partners in the venture, Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez, advised him to take the Gospel passage out of Linus’ mouth.  As one of those executives said, “The Bible thing scares us.” The Peanuts creator’s response spoke volumes: “If we don’t do it, who will?”  The fact that any mention of Jesus over the public airwaves was co...

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) There are at least three ways we use the phrase "celebrate Christmas ." The first is as the celebration Mass of the birth of Christ , that is, as Rome has celebrated it for centuries.  If by celebrating Christmas we mean attending Roman Catholic mass , most assuredly we should not.  A second definition would be more broadly cultural. Here what we mean by celebrating Christmas is decorations, Santa, the Grinch , Rudolph, Frosty, bells on bob tails, Charlie Brown etc. This is not such a good idea either. Without much work one could rather quickly connect each of these Christmas traditions with breaking at least one of the Ten Commandments . At best this kind of Christmas is a deeply troubling distraction from where our hearts ought to be, at worst it is an evil, false, civil religion. What if we ask the question this way- is it wrong to remember the incarnation? Is it a sin to devote some time to rejoicing over ...