Christmas Fireworks

Fireworks were missing from the annual Patchogue, New York boat parade on November 23 because it excluded the name "Christmas." In previous years, it was called the Patchogue Christmas Boat Parade. This year, it was merely the Patchogue Boat Parade. The Patchogue town fathers decided that the word "Christmas" was an offense to a tiny minority, so they removed it to soothe the offended. It is likely the first salvo in the annual Christmas wars.

Although usually associated with Fourth of July celebrations, a $5,000 fireworks display by the internationally famous Fireworks by Grucci of Brookhaven was part of the Christmas Boat Parade last year. But Grucci declined to do so this year because they felt the change in the name nominally demoted the celebration into a secular observance and not a true Christmas event. A compromise effort to have fireworks for a minor light festival as part of the event fell through. The company felt the fireworks display would not honor the original purpose of the parade, which was to observe Christmas.

So, no fireworks in Patchogue this year. Parade attendance fell by one third.

When replacing "Christmas" with what is perceived as the more neutral "holiday," detractors are likely unaware that the origin of the word is "Holy Day." Sometimes secular objectors merely fool themselves running in absurd circles.

The very name Christmas, with it focus on Christ and His virgin-birth appearance in a humble Judean cow stall over two thousand years ago, has been a growing offense in recent years. As secular pluralism has become the tacit unspoken law of the land, the historic facts that gave us the holiday have been morphed into generic Winter Holidays or some vague "points of light" observance. The Patchogue flap is the first volley of multiple shots at Christmas itself. The birth of the Lord Jesus Christ was the greatest event since Creation, promised in Genesis 2:15 leading all the way through Micah 5:2 and fulfilled in tax-payer clogged Bethlehem in the days of Roman Caesar Augustus and his lackey King Herod.

Even then, Christmas was a problem for politically-focused rulers and largely ignored by religious leaders. When Herod quizzed the wise men so he could beat a murderous path to Jesus’ residence, the Jewish scholars had to search their Bibles to specify the place. Herod wanted fireworks but the wrong kind. He ravaged the populace of young children to eradicate any competitor to his throne.

Ironically, from Bethlehem, one can see the cone-shaped hill known as the Herodium, where the wretched killer is buried, just a couple of miles from the town. Archaeologists have discovered his tomb inside this former opulent palace that became his burial vault. Herod’s coffin has been pulverized, likely by vengeance-seeking Jews, yet grateful Christian pilgrims daily stream through the birth-cave of Christ.

While secularists rewrite history and refuse to kneel at the manger, they increase their future pain of one day being forced to bow before the risen Christ. Philippians 2:7-11 merges His first and second comings. "…[He] made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

We sing in the hymn, "Let every kindred, ev’ry tribe, On this terrestrial ball, To Him all majesty ascribe, And crown, Him, Lord of all."

Christ may not be deemed worthy of His name in Patchogue or in other U.S. cities this Christmas, but He will be exalted above every name in the eternity to come. Men bow now willingly in subjection, but then they will bow forcibly in judgment. Christmas always focuses the choice.

Dave Virkler