GUEST POST: Today’s contributor to The 12 Blogs Of Christmas is my fellow blogger Scott Higa. Scott writes over at The Christian Nerd and I’ve become a huge fan of his work over the past year or so.  His posts and his dedication are a huge inspiration to me. He also hosts The Christian Nerd Podcast which drops every Monday that does a fantastic job mixing nerdy entertainment news with serious faith-based discussions. Don’t hold his aversion to egg nog against him; follow along with his blog and on Twitter anyway. Enjoy his contribution to POP GOD:

Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace and goodwill, yet some people want to treat it like a warzone.

There was that fool complaining about Starbucks’ cups who brandished a gun in a store.

There are those who loudly proclaim “Keep the Christ in Christmas.”

And we have the constant reminders that Jesus is the reason for the season.

Now I wholeheartedly believe that Jesus is the reason for the season. The reality that God sent his Son to earth to be our Lord and savior is utterly amazing. I have heard the true Christmas story every year since my first Christmas in 1981, and I’m still blown away by God’s great love for us. He saw us trapped in sin and darkness, but sent his Son to bring the light and love that would set us free.

That’s awesome and worth celebrating year round, not just in December.

In fact, the true Christmas story is so amazing that any alleged war against it is bound to fail. So we don’t even need to enter into the fray; we can simply let Christmas be Christmas.

We can go to parties.

We can drink eggnog (even though it’s disgusting).

We can decorate our houses with Santa Claus, Rudolph, Frosty and every other secular Christmas decoration on the planet.

Because no matter how much people want there to be a war on Christmas, Christmas will always be about the peace and wholeness brought by that little baby boy born in Bethlehem. And that truth can be most clearly seen at the shopping mall.

The shopping mall? But isn’t that the brazen symbol for everything wrong with Christmas? Isn’t the shopping mall the bright star of consumerism that was the first salvo in the war on Christmas? Don’t even secular people see the shopping mall as the poster for the deterioration of the Norman Rockwell Christmas?

It is true that the mall can be a terrible place at Christmas. It’s crowded, people can get angry and it is a monument to the capitalistic nature of the season. However, it’s not about what we see at the mall; it’s about what we can hear.

Amidst songs about Dasher, Dancer, figgy pudding and Brenda Lee’s penchant for “pumpkin” pie, we will hear the name of Jesus being praised. It’s insane that while walking through the mall we can hear Frank Sinatra sing “The First Noel” or Nat King Cole serenade shoppers with “O Holy Night.” Everything in creation was made to praise and worship God. And even in a place that seems completely removed from the true meaning of Christmas, we can still hear God’s praises being sung for what he did in that manger.

We don’t need to wage a war for Christmas. If every church were locked up, if every nativity scene were thrown in the dump and if no Christmas carols were ever sung again, Christmas would still be Christmas. What happens today cannot undo what was done 2,000 years ago.