by guest blogger Joseph L. Conn

Jesus wants you to go shopping this Christmas at Wal-Mart, Macy’s and J.C. Penney’s. But whatever you do, don’t venture into The Gap, Eddie Bauer or Old Navy.

Well, I guess I shouldn’t say it’s Jesus who wants you to make those shopping decisions. It’s Dr. James Dobson and some of the other Religious Right honchos who claim to speak for Jesus in our day.

Dobson’s Focus on the Family (FOF) has a nice little list of merchandising outlets that wish you a Merry Christmas — instead of Happy Holidays — and thus in the Religious Right’s rather warped worldview somehow preserve the true spirit of Christmas.

Last week, Dobson devoted an edition of his radio show to “keeping Christ in Christmas.” His FOF had reviewed 50 prominent retailers’ Web sites and catalogs to make sure they were mentioning Christmas while making a profit.

“We want to identify the most prominent of these corporations so that people will know how to shop,” he said ominously. (Somehow I thought of Red-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy and the list of known communists he infamously held in his hand back in the 1950s.)

This Religious Right project has always baffled me. As I understand the Christian faith, Christmas is celebrated as the birth of Jesus Christ, the messiah sent to take away the sins of the world. It is a sacred day to the faithful, not an occasion to dive into America’s annual orgy of materialism and heedless spending.

Shouldn’t religious leaders be celebrating the true spirit of Christmas? Shouldn’t they be speaking out against rampant materialism instead of just telling Christians which stores to go to?

I always wondered why no Christian leaders ever spoke out in opposition to Dobson and Co. Finally, that has happened. Seventeen religious leaders from different Christian perspectives have signed an “Open Letter to Christmas Culture Warriors.”

It says, “It’s time for a ceasefire in the Christmas culture wars.

“As Americans of faith,” the letter continues, “we also see a dangerous assault on the true meaning of this sacred day. But our outrage has little to do with a few examples of people saying ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas.’ We believe the real assault on Christmas is how a season of peace, forgiveness and goodwill has been sidelined by a focus on excessive consumerism.

“The powerful message Christ brings to the world is ‘good news for the poor.’ Instead, Christmas is being reduced to a corporate-sponsored holiday that idolizes commerce and materialism. Shopping and gift giving are meaningful traditions that can express the season’s values, but perspective is lost when relentless advertising and maxed-out credit cards define the holiday. It’s time to reclaim the virtue of shared sacrifice for the common good.

“To focus on how department stores greet customers at a time when American soldiers are dying in Iraq and 37 million of our neighbors live in poverty is a distraction from the profound moral challenges we face in confronting the real threats to human dignity in our world.”

Letter signers range from Sister Yvette Arnold of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd to Dr. Randall Balmer, an evangelical Christian and professor of religious history at Barnard College. The project was organized by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.

These believers have given us exactly the holiday present we most needed: a powerful riposte to the Religious Right and a reminder of what the season’s really supposed to be about.

Joseph L. Conn is director of communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.