Dim lighting and candles softly illuminate decorative tapestries as the smell of incense fills the air and the harmonic sound of hundreds singing in unison drifts onto a busy street next to an overflowing church on a wet and windy Sunday morning.
Despite the packed pews at Gaza’s Church of St. Porphyrius just weeks before Christmas, Christianity is not booming here. Rather, the worshipers at the 1,600-year-old shrine believe they may be the last group of Christians in Gaza, where they have lived and prayed since the birth of Jesus.
The ongoing Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and the highest unemployment rate in the world are prompting Christians to leave the besieged area in droves, some using the holiday season to their advantage.
Although Israel rarely grants permits to leave the Palestinian territory, dozens of Christians are allowed to visit Bethlehem and Jerusalem during Easter and Christmas, and some take the opportunity to never return home so they can start a new life elsewhere.
You can read the rest @
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/12/20/after-2000-years-christians-gaza-disappearing/77503936/
Gaza is not the only place Christmas is disappearing:
Parents of kindergarten students pulled their kids out of class recently to protest the cancellation of an annual Christmas tradition: a school trip to see Santa.
For the past 10 years, students at Sartorette Elementary School in San Jose, Calif., have taken a field trip to a local coffee shop to deliver letters to Santa, sit on his lap, and drink hot chocolate.
The trip was canceled after one class mother, Talia (who has withheld her last name from the media), complained that the tradition was exclusive of other religions, which don’t believe in Santa or celebrate Christmas. Talia, who is Jewish, says the issue is bigger than one religion. “This is not a Jewish issue for me,” she told NBC Bay Area. “It’s an inclusion issue. We can’t spend five days on just one culture. That’s fostering intolerance. When Christmas is given the same time, or [more] time, than American holidays, like Veterans Day, then kids don’t feel as American.”
Talia’s daughter is the only Jewish student in the class, but she told NBC that six other cultures are represented in the class but are not celebrated in school. “The field trip was tied to two writing workshops that were supposed to be spent writing to Santa,” she told KGO. “There was also a reindeer party and other Christmas related activities. There was nothing done for the Diwali festival. We have two Hindu girls in our class. There was nothing done for Ramadan. We have a Muslim boy in our class.“ A certified public school teacher, Talia said the Santa lesson was better taught outside of class hours.
You can read the rest @
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/kindergarten-trip-to-visit-santa-1326217319448630.html
Dear Talia: While it may be true that "six other cultures are represented in the class", you seem to be the only one complaining. Why is that?
Almost every time someone complains about the celebration of Christmas in US public spaces, either their identity is not revealed, or if it is revealed the complainer is Jewish or a "non-practicing Jew". It is not Muslims who are destroying Christianity, it is the Israelis and the Jewish diaspora.
Two thousand years ago we Christians were fed to the lions, but today we do nothing to defend our faith. Why is that?
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