TMTF solemnly presents another hellish look at life from a demon’s perspective. This is an email intercepted from the demon Turnspike to his colleague Goreflak; a previous email from Turnspike and TMTF’s commentary thereupon can be found here.

My Dear Goreflak,

You continue to amaze me, my dear devil, with your supreme ignorance and idiocy. You actually want to abolish the holiday called Christmas? There are so many flaws in your thinking that I hardly know how to begin the process of pointing them out.

First of all, the Enemy would never let Christmas be completely destroyed. It is (or was; more on that presently) a celebration of his own Son’s life on Earth as one of those ridiculous human vermin. A full-fledged attack upon Christmas would be disastrous for us and Our Father Below. Our only chance lies in perverting Christmas into something more suited to our purposes.

Second, destroying Christmas would not change the regrettable fact of Christ’s birth. So long as that fact remains, the celebration of Christmas remains possible even if we do away with the trappings of the holiday. The meaning of Christmas is not in seasonal decorations or traditions, but in Christ. We would accomplish nothing by abolishing the decorations and traditions, for Christ would remain.

Third, even if we could somehow do away with Christmas entirely, we would still have a dozen other wretched Christian holidays to obliterate: Saint Valentine’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Easter, All Saints’ Day—the list goes on.

Destroying Christmas is clearly not an option. However, we have achieved something even better. As I mentioned, we would accomplish nothing by abolishing the decorations and traditions of the holiday—so we have instead exaggerated them.

Do you remember how in a previous email I explained how we had eclipsed All Saints’ Day by making Halloween into a commercialized holiday? We have done something similar with Christmas. It is no longer a celebration of Christ. It is a celebration of holiday specials and decorated trees, seasonal music and sugar cookies—and shopping. Christmas has become the biggest commercial frenzy of the year, when people across the world are given a gift-wrapped excuse to spend money.

I am afraid there is nothing inherently wrong in the decorations and traditions of Christmas. The humans enjoy music and food and gift-giving, and there is nothing we devils can do to prevent it. However, it is happily within our power to use these things to distract the humans from the Enemy, who would give them gifts too great to be bought or wrapped if only they would let him.

Incidentally, I wish to draw your attention to our use of political correctness in conquering Christmas. It is a Christian holiday, yet we have largely succeeded in removing its Christianity.

Christmas trees are sometimes called holiday trees and Nativity scenes are banned from public places for the sake of “not upsetting anybody.” Phrases like Merry Christmas are eschewed in favor of insipid slogans like Happy Holidays in order to be “more tolerant.” No secular establishment dares to acknowledge that Christ might have something to do with Christmas because someone “might be offended” if they do.

We have made sure it never occurs to anyone that Christians might be offended—not just offended, but deeply hurt—that Christmas, a Christian celebration, has been hijacked by people who prevent its Christianity from being celebrated publicly and use it simply to make money. The wonderful thing about political correctness is that it typically insults nobody but Christians, and nobody but Christians seems to mind.

My dear devil, I hope you are noticing a recurring tendency in our work as demons. Judging by the stupidity of your emails to me, I sincerely doubt it, and so it falls to me to point it out to you. We seldom face our Enemy head-on. We never destroy what we can pervert.

I hope you keep this principle in mind as you continue tempting your Patient.

Happy holidays!

Your affectionate colleague,

Turnspike