This Christmas is a troubled time—a season of war rather than peace, from the Black Sea to Bethlehem.
America is full of political foreboding, and Christmas itself has become a source of controversy.
Some find the holiday adrift from its true meaning, a Christian holy day transformed into a celebration of consumerism, when fir trees and reindeer are more conspicuous than the Christ child.
To others, Christmas is all too Christian for a pluralistic, 21st-century America, where we should wish one another “happy holidays” instead of risking offense with a “merry Christmas.”
Then there’s the playful yet often surprisingly intense argument over whether “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie. The Bruce Willis film isn’t exactly seasonally appropriate in its themes and violence—but it does take place at Christmas. If that makes a movie a Christmas movie, then…
