With its dark green leaves and fiery-red berries, few trees are as lovely as the holly. Yet the berry of the holly is poison to man, as is the mistletoe berry and the Jerusalem cherry. All these colorful green things brighten homes at the time of the birth of Our Savior.

How like these berries are the ideas an unsuspecting public gulps down at Christmas time! A case in point is a recent TV "holiday" commercial for a nationwide clothing chain. In the commercial, young people dance to wild, chaotic music while their bodies assume contorted positions. The commercial encourages customers to buy their Christmas, Kwanza, and Solstice gifts at Gap. Yes, Solstice gifts!

Solstice is a holiday celebrated by "pagans," and paganism is repackaged witchcraft, and witchcraft slowly darkens, withers, and kills the human soul. Modern day "pagans" are reacting to the Gap commercial with laughter and disbelief. More than anyone else, they know their "religion" is at war with God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Putting them on a par with Christianity at the time of the birth of the Savior, strikes even them as ludicrous. 

The sugar-coating which sweetens this bitter dose of witchcraft is multiculturalism, tolerance, and diversity, the spirit of the Gap "holiday" commercial. Similarly, the vilest practices imaginable -  abortion, euthanasia, and homosexual marriage - are wrapped up in a bow of tolerance and compassion, and sold to an unsuspecting public as "freedom of choice," or an "alternative lifestyle."  Small wonder then that at the time of the Incarnation, the arrival of the infant Jesus - the Light of this World - liberals are offering the forces of darkness a seat at the table.

John Bunyan said it best. In his powerful allegorical work, the "Holy War," Bunyan describes how the town of Man-Soul is captured by the Devil. The Devil attempts to dethrone God by setting up in His place lust, vile affection, and a hunger for material goods. Addressing the town of Man-Soul, the Devil says:

"Moreover, Oh Town, consider how I have served you, even to the utmost of my power, and that with the best that I have, could get, or procure for you in all the world…Your liberty also, as yourselves very well know, has been greatly widened and enlarged by me. Whereas I found you a pent-up people, I have not laid any restraint upon you; you have no law, statute, or judgment of mine to frighten you…I have granted you to live, each man, like a prince in his own, even with as little control from me as I have had from you."

If this sounds uncannily like modern-day America, consider also that Bunyan had the Devil warn the town that any attempt by a thundering preacher to remind them of God's laws lacked "love and compassion."

Let us take Bunyan's lesson to heart. Every Christian is under an obligation to see that America obeys God's laws; and we should not praise a society for its freedom, tolerance, and material abundance if that same society is mounting a Hellish rebellion against God. If we do so, we will be swallowing the poison along with the sugar coating; and we will be encouraging others to do the same.