Christmas champions awarded for defending faith

As the 2010 Advent season draws to a close, we Christians can look forward to enjoying Christmas with our family and friends in our homes and churches. We can be thankful that we have yet again witnessed another wonderful Christmas season and have seen the artistic beauty of our world all dressed up for Jesus. All the Christmas concerts, plays, bazaars, the classroom and office Christmas parties, the toy, coat, and food drives, the frenetic shopping trips and all the annual festive events that lift our hearts in recognition of the great God we serve are all drawing to a close. Most of us are now in the process of wrapping gifts for Christmas Eve and organizing the preparations for Christmas Day dinner.

Our TV screens and print publications are filled with wholesome images of people attending midnight service, of happy people of all ages gathered around the Christmas tree singing carols, or families at dining tables enjoying one another's company while feasting on great food. Most agencies in our society attempt to facilitate families coming together at Christmastime. TV cameras bring us images of our young military people stationed abroad sending their "Merry Christmas" wishes home, while "I'll Be Home for Christmas" plays in the background.

Americans, as a people, take great comfort in the idea that the majority of families in our nation make special efforts to be together on Christmas. It stitches the fabric of American life together at a special time of the year that is important to the overwhelming majority of us. Once the stores have closed and everyone is gathered in, quiet rolls across our land; an awesome quietness that directs us towards worship and family – "peace on earth."

Unfortunately, this Advent season also produced a cacophony of offensive, insulting and bigoted acts against Christmas and those who observe it by the enemies of Christ who live among us. Christians have been made irksomely aware that our faith and Christmas festivals are under unrelenting assaults by well-arrayed, elite super-minorities that seek to strip us of our Christian cultural definitive authority and de-Christianize America's public square.

In response to the social, cultural and legal conflicts that have come to be known as "Christmas wars," the Christian majority America has produced valiant individuals and scores of organizations that are fighting arduously to protect our Christian religious rights, defend Christmas and promote America's Christian way of life.

There are also corporations that have chosen to support our traditional Christmas culture and are being rewarded, as they should be, with great
admiration and growing numbers of loyal Christian customers.

Whenever possible Christians should consciously laud and support those who are defending us and validating our heritage. Those of us who are in the position to spotlight these patriots should gladly do so. For these reasons I, the Christian Christmas Lady, am establishing and presenting two Christmas service awards for the 2010.

The Christian Christmas Lady's 2010 Christmas Culture Award goes to COMCAST television cable service
for playing hundreds of selections of American Christmas music performed by a wide variety of America's most talented singers and musicians, 24/7
on their community bulletin boards starting Nov. 1, this year.

COMCAST has done more to affirm American culture and promote
the Christmas Spirit than any other corporation in America this
2010 Advent season. COMCAST has provided an invaluable service for millions upon millions of Christmas-observing Americans, and I hope they will continue to play the Christmas music right through New Year's Day.

The Christian Christmas Lady's 2010 Christian Christmas Courage Award goes to William Anthony Donohue of The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
of New York City.

This year Bill Donohue launched a national nativity campaign by shipping nativity scenes to the governors of each state in the U.S., with the request that the crèches be displayed in each governor's respective state capitol building.

Mr. Donohue's organization is also now displaying a new life-sized nativity scene in New York's Central Park. However, the most dramatic action boldly taken by Mr. Donohue this Advent season was his lighting-fast response to the American Atheist organization's mean-spirited anti-Christian billboard placed on the New Jersey entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. The Catholic League, thanks to an unnamed donor, posted an even larger pro-Christmas nativity billboard on the New York exit of the tunnel.

Bill Donohue has proven himself to be a fearless unyielding defender of Christmas and a courageous Christian Christmas activist.

My congratulations to both Comcast Cable Television and Mr. Donohue for being sterling examples of forces for good. Hopefully, other corporations and individuals will follow their lead and act to preserve American culture.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

REMINDER: Please participate in The Christian Christmas Lady's project to ask all the churches in America with bells to program them to play Christmas carols throughout 2010 Advent and to program them to ring at 12:00 midnight on Christmas Eve and at 12:00 noon on Christmas Day. Click here to read and forward a copy of my column, "Ring the Christmas Church Bells!"