If I’ve heard them once, I’ve heard them hundreds of times. ‘Put the Christ back in Christmas.’ ‘Jesus is the reason for the season.’ But this is, and let’s be honest, bumper sticker theology. What do I mean by that? I mean that it’s a short phrase meant to have great meaning to insiders and stir them up emotionally even while it further alienates and annoys outsiders. Such statements make sweeping generalizations that don’t account for the fact that truth is often nuanced. Such statements pretend to be a panacea; the one silver bullet that will kill the werewolf of your life and make everything perfect again, which when I put it like that, sounds just as full of BS as it actually is.

So if we’re not going to resort to bumper sticker theology and yet we’re still looking for something deeper than getting a Dyson RayGun (not the actual brand name) on the morning of the 25th, then… well… what is the point of Christmas?