Canon Press – Blog

Below is an article written for our annual Christmas catalog.

The Merry Invasion

It is common for Christians to complain about how secularists have declared war on Christmas. Now it is quite true that they are at war with Christmas, but it is not true that they declared the war. What they are doing is fighting a defensive rearguard action. God is the one who declared war, and God is the one who invaded.

I mean, think about it. What are we celebrating at Christmas? We are celebrating the moment when the second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Word of God, came down from Heaven, and was born in our midst. God in Heaven became God with us . . . Immanuel.

True, centuries before, unbelief had declared war initially. God had said not to eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and our first parents went ahead and did it. That was long past, long ago. Since that time, our entire world had been run by the principalities and powers. With only a few exceptions here and there, the loyalty to these celestial powers was overwhelming and complete. A certain equilibrium had been reached, This was the dark planet, the silent one.

But then God broke what the principalities had thought was a working truce, and a small baby boy was born to a virgin at Bethlehem. The first to notice—after the sheep and the shepherds—was King Herod. Unrighteous men on thrones are always wary about stories and rumors of once and future kings. A scepter will rise from Israel. A star will rise out of Jacob. Wise men will see it, and they will come a long distance. And Herod attempted to do what men in his position have always attempted to do—he sought to kill the baby boy.

So there is your war on Christmas. There really should be small carved soldiers, Herod’s troops, as part of our average Nativity sets. But Herod was—it should be recognized—acting defensively. He was responding to a challenge, and it was a real challenge, a true challenge to his authority—and all authority like it.

People who want to rule that way—whether they be tetrarchs, kings, presidents, prime ministers, or chairmen of a great assembly of European bureaucrats—have never liked the thought of that baby in that manger. It unsettles them. And for good reason, frankly.

– Doug Wilson

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Have a merry Christmas!

Forrest Dickison was born and raised in Moscow, Idaho. The third of four incredibly handsome boys, he grew up canoeing, shooting bad guys, and building stuff. As an artist and illustrator, he takes much of his inspiration from grass, bones, trees, doors, the human body, monsters, and pictures of places that he has and has not been. His paintings are strong as cows, colorful as fish, and textured as asphalt. He will paint until he dies.

By this point, Forrest Dickison has learned how to draw inside the lines (most of the time), mainly from books and tutorials. He prefers oil and gouache for fine art, but is deadly with anything from ballpoint pens to spray paint to digital media. His work has appeared in several northwest art shows and galleries and has been featured on a number of Canon Press book covers and interiors. You can see his most recent paintings in the children’s books Hello Ninja (the first ever national Starbucks eBook of the Week), Blah Blah Black Sheep, and The Sword of Abram, and on our new releases For Christ’s Crown and Rules for Reformers.

Subscribe to Canon Press to be in the loop on Forrest’s latest projects with us. Cool kids can connect with @forrestdabney on Instagram for a liberal helping of character sketches, strange beasties, full-blown oils, and much more.

One of the central duties of parents is to teach their children to be grateful to God for all their many blessings. I remember my father teaching me that I could not even lift my little finger if it were not for God’s power and goodness. That little lesson had an impact, obviously, because I still remember him demonstrating this finger-lifting.

So when you are teaching the little ones to say thank you and please, it is a lesson about their Christian duties that reaches beyond simple cultural expressions of good manners. It it teaching them to have thankful impulses. It is teaching them to speak the language God wants to hear from all His people all the time.

Our fallen, sinful impulses direct us to take notice of what is missing, what is lacking, how things fall short of our desires. This is why kids whine and moan and are given to complaining. But God has given parents to children to bring them up to better things. So we have to accompany our commands to our children (say please when you ask for things) with biblical teaching (God wants us to be thankful for everything all the time).

Children need to be taught to count their blessings: fingers, toes, parents, siblings, food, sunshine, rain, presents, and all the rest. And, as always, it comes back to the parents modeling such gratitude themselves.

Nancy Wilson