At NCR, Millennial writer Mike Jordan Laskey writes:

War on Christmas.

Did you roll your eyes when you read it? This cable-news fake controversy has been around long enough now to have become a parody of itself. But do not be complacent. There is indeed a War on Christmas going on, if a bit different in nature than Fox commentators might suggest. Here are nine signs of it and ways you can resist…

Using tear gas on asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border and separating families through deportation.

Jesus was a poor child born in a cave surrounded by animals. Soon after his birth, his family became refugees when they fled King Herod into Egypt. When we treat immigrants, refugees and asylum speakers with anything less than the utmost dignity, failing to see the face of Christ in their faces, we are forgetting who we are and who God is. Our current national failure to treat migrants better is the biggest crime of all in the War on Christmas.

Unbridled materialism and commercialization.

I’ll never forget the Christmas gifts my young nieces were most excited to receive last year: umbrellas. And they live in Southern California, where it never rains. Their parents have cultivated a sense of simplicity and gratitude in their home that has helped them preserve the real meaning of Christmas. It was so refreshing and challenging. Could I cut my own or my kids’ Christmas lists down to one single five-dollar item?