I leave for Asia tomorrow. While packing up my mobile office, I found this un-posted blog hiding on my cluttered desktop. I wrote it a few days after Christmas.

In M. Night Shyamalan’s 2004 movie, The Village, the elders taught their children to fear “those we don’t speak of” who lived in the forbidden wood. No one was exactly sure why they should be afraid, but they lived in terror nonetheless.

For the past twenty-three years, we have celebrated almost every Christmas in the Philippines, but being in Nashville this year, I think I have discovered the real-life version of “those we don’t speak of” right here in Middle Tennessee.

When I was growing up in Mississippi, we had Christmas holidays and greeted everyone with a joyful “Merry Christmas.” School children today no longer have Christmas holidays, they have “winter break.” Public schools no longer have Christmas programs, they have holiday presentations. None dare mention the “C” word. Christmas has become the holiday “we don’t speak of.” We only speak of some generic Holiday Season.

Why is America so afraid of Christmas?