The dog and I walked past a house this Christmas season
where the decorations consisted of:
• one giant, air-supported snowman
• one giant, air-supported Santa Claus
• one "Keep Christ in Christmas" sign
I've always assumed that "Keep Christ in Christmas" signs were meant to admonish us to include Jesus in our thoughts as we plan and celebrate the holiday. This particular set of decorations caused me to consider a different meaning. The phrase could also be construed as advocating that we not let Jesus out of his one designated holiday. Let's just keep him safely tucked away. No intrusion into our daily lives, thank you very much.
A Christ restricted to Christmas is a particularly innocuous sort of God. In the first place, Jesus at Christmas is only a baby and not very threatening to anyone. (Yes, I know that Herod felt threatened. But Herod was worried that the baby would grow up. Herod wasn't concerned about Jesus as a child.)
Not only that, but at Christmas time this baby was out in a barn somewhere in the exurbs, far away from most of us. So, keeping Christ within the bounds of Christmas reduces the danger that we might need to interact with God, for all that God was living among us.
Even for a baby, the Jesus of the Christmas carols is remarkably inoffensive. He was born, we are told, silently ("how silently!") and promptly goes to sleep. I have no direct experience, but all the books and movies tell me this silence is unusual for a healthy baby. When the cows moo -- look, I too heard it was a stable, but there were cows so it must have been a cow barn -- when the cows moo, I say, Jesus does wake up, but unlike ordinary infants "no crying he makes". All in all, we can trust the Christ of Christmas carols not even to threaten our sleep on a winter's night.
We've tried often enough to make Jesus inoffensive. He's described as meek and mild, obedient and diligent, impoverished, suffering, dead and buried. Yet none of this has been enough to keep the man from rising up at the most inopportune moments to challenge our American Way of Life.
So perhaps the homeowner has the right idea, the only acceptable and plausible idea. Let Christ be kept in Christmas. For the rest, let us get on with our illusions of Santa Claus and larger than life snowmen.