Blaise Pascal

Let’s start with the bad news: In honor of China’s economic rise, a Chinese-looking woman served as Christmas Grinch here in the States. The sourpuss teacher up in Nanuet ruined the Christmas spirit for a class full of seven- and eight-year-olds when she told them that there is no Santa Claus and that the presents under their trees did not come from the North Pole but were put there by their parents. It’s outrageous that a teacher would strip children of their innocence and demystify something as precious as Christmas.

The Brooklyn Museum makes its annual attack on Christian sensibilities with its disgusting exhibition whose name I will not mention. The show figures a video in which ants crawl over a bloody, crucified Jesus. The “auteur” behind this crap died of AIDS 20 years ago, but the museum’s director, one Arnold Lehman, includes it to show how trendy he is. He also went running to the feds once he lost 35 percent of its endowment in the stock market. My heart bleeds. He is the vile one who once featured a painting of the Virgin Mary made of elephant dung and pornographic photos. Not to worry. Most people involved with that outrage are dead or dying. The Almighty has a way of dealing with such scum.

Then there are those sports announcers who make fun every time a white professional football player—one of the rare college graduates who can read and write and play football—goes down on one knee and says a brief and silent prayer after scoring a touchdown. Imagine these blowhards if a Muslim—which many of the black football players are—did the same thing. They’d probably shut up in their soundproof booths in silent respect. They’d be scared shitless to make fun of them. When it comes to scorn, only Christians need apply. Many black footballers are ex-cons, but only Tim Tebow is singled out, and for being…a Christian. He is lampooned as a freak. Some freak. In the meantime, he has a long winning streak going for him, which drives the jerks in the booths nuts.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the only man who is still hated after 2,000 years. This in itself does not prove his divinity, but it shows that his words and example haven’t dated. They still have an amazing power to provoke hatred as well as adoration. Hatred of Christ usually pretends to be directed at side targets like the institutional church or organized religion. But why would anyone object to a man preaching an innocuous message of benevolence? Many of his followers died under torture to bear witness to him after the Resurrection. These martyrs were Christianity’s principal human message in its infancy, deeply impressing and finally converting millions.