Have you been following this year's version of the "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" debate?

Just in case you've somehow missed it, it has centered around the American Family Association's call for all Christians who still think that Christmas is the official American holiday of December to boycott the Gap and its subsidiaries (Old Navy and Banana Republic). The offense that brought it all about was the store's winter ad campaign that failed to recognize the true reason for the season, the birth of Jesus and his apparent role in the runaway consumerism that marks this time of year. 

Without rehearsing every twist and turn of the standoff and eventual resolution between the AFA and the Gap, suffice it to say that the clothing store responded to the threatened loss of over one million holiday shoppers (the AFA's alleged online support base) by doing what any respectable profit-driven retailer would do: appeasing all parties via a balanced dose of political correctness and carefully placed buzz words.

While a quick Google search can tell you more than you want to know about the details of this colossal adventure in missing the point, I would like to bring a bit of clarity to the actual issue at stake here: American Christianity's failure to recognize the great chasm between the true meaning of Christmas and the hypocritical farce to which we have reduced it in the eyes of our non-Christian, secular, postmodern neighbors.

At its core, Christmas is the day we celebrate the Incarnation of Christ, the profound act of agape love by which the God of heaven and earth -- the God who had every right because of our rebellion against Him to boycott our lives -- met us in our sin and ransomed us from it. He did so, of course, by sending his one and only Son to live among us and to reveal the heart of the Father to us, a heart filled with grace and peace, mercy and truth. Whatever else Christmas is, it is certainly and essentially this.

As a result, any genuine, God-honoring celebration of this holy day ought to showcase the children of God -- those who by grace alone have come to see in Jesus the true nature of the Father -- doing likewise. It ought to be a time when those who claim to be followers of Christ actually follow his example. It ought to be a time when we demonstrate unconditional, unwarranted, unmerited love toward those in our culture who have no idea how much God loves them, no clue how much He has done to prove it. But instead we are fighting with them, expecting them to say "Merry Christmas" -- a greeting that, if they were to use it in their ignorance, would betray them as hypocrites -- just because we do.

In the end, then, it seems that the only real problem with the Gap is that we Christians are not standing in it. 

Now, if that is a problem we are willing to address with similar passion and holy indignation, then the solution is within reach. We simply must repent of our pride and self-righteousness and live as the incarnational presence of Jesus, the very body of Christ Himself in this world.

But that, dear ones, will cost us far more than a trip to the mall.