{"id":605,"date":"2012-11-09T22:10:58","date_gmt":"2012-11-10T02:10:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/?p=605"},"modified":"2012-11-09T22:10:58","modified_gmt":"2012-11-10T02:10:58","slug":"whats-christmas-mean-to-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/?p=605","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s Christmas Mean to Americans?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reading <em>The Church in a Age of Crisis<\/em> by James Emery White, I came across these words:<\/p>\n<p><em>An analysis of 48,000 hours of programming by the NRB (National Religious Broadcasters) found that 90 percent of holiday programming did not have a significant spiritual theme; seven percent had a religious or spiritual theme but did not refer to Jesus or the biblical story of his birth. Jesus was the focus of only three percent of all Christmas programming.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I&#8217;ll confess that A Christmas Story has become one of my favorite movies. The nostalgia of the time and the way it reveals how Christmas often works runs deep and familiar. But when I watch it along with millions of others, I remind myself that while it is a Christmas story, it is not the Christmas story.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>But it is for our nation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And more than our Christmas narrative, it reflects the new state of faith<\/em>. (White, p. 19.)<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t help but wonder how God want to use this information to shape the ways we communicate about Christmas in this age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading The Church in a Age of Crisis by James Emery White, I came across these words: An analysis of 48,000 hours of programming by the NRB (National Religious Broadcasters) found that 90 percent of holiday programming did not have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/?p=605\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-formation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9XvLb-9L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":606,"href":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curwensvillealliance.org\/pastorsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}