President Trump declared the return of “Merry Christmas,” an open invitation for Americans to be bold and unafraid to share their Christian faith this Christmas season.

“We’re saying MERRY CHRISTMAS again!” the White House posted on X on December 1, alongside a picture of the smiling president beside a fully decorated Christmas tree in the Oval Office.

During his first campaign for president, then-candidate Trump would regularly assure crowds that “We’re going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”

“You go into a department store. When was the last time you saw ‘Merry Christmas?’ You don’t see it anymore,” Trump contended during a speech at Liberty University in January 2016. “They want to be politically correct. If I’m president, you will see ‘Merry Christmas’ in department stores, believe me, believe me.”

The president, known for speaking in generalities and hyperboles, certainly recognized a very real cultural phenomenon.

According to a 2022 report produced by the International Institute for Religious Freedom, Christians often engage in “various forms of self-censorship” in response to secular intolerance.

It seems good people can disagree on matters of music. But assuming Christmas music are worship tunes designed to celebrate our Lord’s birthday and pay homage to Him, should it ever be out of season to sing of the Incarnation on any given day of the year?

Christmas music with good theology seem appropriate twelve months out of the year.

As a child, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” was my favorite of all the carols. Originally a poem written by the English Methodist Charles Wesley, who penned over 6,000 hymns, he was said to have been inspired to write it after hearing church bells on Christmas Day. The Anglican cleric and evangelist George Whitefield, a colleague of Wesley’s, adapted and revised it.

All the verses are jubilant and triumphant, but the third verse sums up the significance of Christ’s purpose just beautifully.

“O Come, All Ye Faithful” is probably my favorite carol as an adult. Often accompanied by brass and rich instrumentation, it’s written in a way that allows congregations to sing robustly together.

The Christmas song, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” tells us:

It’s the most wonderful time of the year
With the kids jingle belling
And everyone telling you, “Be of good cheer!”
It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

The song was first popularized in 1963 by Andy Williams, the crooner with the mellow tenor voice. It goes on to describe the Christmas season as “the hap-happiest season of all,” with holiday greetings, marshmallow toasting and “caroling out in the snow.”

But for many, this can be a difficult season. Some are dealing with grief over a loved one who died in the past year, or they have estranged family members. Others struggle with mental health or addiction issues — which the long nights and demands of the season can exacerbate.

Some feel a real loneliness, separated from family and friends, or the season may bring up memories “of Christmases long, long ago” — that weren’t all that great.

Some of us struggle with seasonal affective disorder when the days are short and there’s less sunlight. I know I bring my “Happy Light” out in mid-November, counting the days to December 21 when the days finally start getting longer.

There are times that Christina Rosetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter” resonates more with me than “the hap-happiest season of all.”

Months before its December 9, 1965 debut, The New York Times television reporter Val Adams called A Charlie Brown Christmas a “big gamble” that was “tampering with the imaginations of millions of comic strip fans on how Charlie Brown, Lucy and others should act and talk.”

It might have been a risk, but it was a wager that certainly paid off.

How and why does a nearly six decade old animated television program manage to connect with younger audiences — and still draw many of us older viewers back year after year?

One of the main reasons is that A Charlie Brown Christmas isn’t about Santa Claus and reindeer and the traditional sentimental trappings found in your typical holiday television fare.

It’s about the birth of Jesus Christ, perfectly and poignantly articulated by Linus in the climactic scene of the Peanuts’ gang’s stage performance.

In writing the special with producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez, Charlie Brown creator Charles Schulz insisted on including a passage from the gospel of Luke, which contains a detailed description of Jesus’ birth and the popular Christmas passage read every year in churches all over the world.