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Yes, Virginia, the War on Christmas is raging, and is worth fighting.

David Boze welcomed Rabbi Daniel Lapin to talk about why the fight is so important: because the denigration of Christmas is a symptom of a culture that seems comfortable denigrating Christians, which could create room for tyrannical government.

“[The War on Christmas] is very real, and secondly it contains the seeds of serious peril,” Lapin told Boze.

Lapin described an experiment he uses to prove people are OK with insulting Christians. He takes the title of an anti-Christian book and replaces the word “Christian” with the word “homosexual,” and then asks people what they think of the re-edited title.

“And even those of us who take religion seriously, we sort of catch our breath and say, ‘What a terrible book that is,'” Lapin, who is head of the American Alliance of Jews and Christians, said. “As soon as I go back to the Christian in the title we sort of relax.

“We’ve been indoctrinated to believe it is open season on Christians. It’s the last group in America that it’s OK to insult, to take potshots at.”

Another example, Boze and Lapin highlighted, is the depiction of Christians in popular media. Boze recalled a recent news story he read that lamented the decline of homosexual characters appearing on prime-time TV – yet he has found a similar lack of positive depictions of Christians.

“You have to go back to 1964 – “The Sound of Music” – might’ve been the last time we saw a compassionate and sensitive depiction of a religious figure,” Lapin said. “I don’t think we’ve seen too many of them since then.”

The overarching point, Lapin said, is that allowing Christianity to be denigrated – via small steps, like wishing “happy holidays” or removing nativity scenes – removes faith from public life, which can create an opening for a tyrannical government to take over.

“Let’s recognize the truth, which is that government means smaller human beings. Judaism and Christianity do the opposite; they enlarge us; they remind us we were created in the image of god himself. These are two conflicting views, these are reasons why all people who subscribe to the [Judeo-Christian viewpoint] are opposed to … tyrannical government in its extreme.”