“To even think that we have come to the point where we do not worship on the Lord’s Day because it is Christmas is, to me, absolutely absurd. Where’s the logic in that? What are people thinking?”

For those who follow Christian traditions, Christmas begins when the darkness of Christmas Eve yields to bright midnight candles and the Mass of the Angels or the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The Christmas season then lasts 12 days, ending with Epiphany on Jan. 6.

But things aren’t that simple in modern America, the land of the free and the home of the malls. For millions of us, today’s Christmas begins when “Feliz Navidad” beer ads start interrupting National Football League broadcasts and holiday movies surge into cable-TV schedules previously crowded with Halloween zombie marathons.

Or perhaps the season begins with those Christmas church bazaars around Thanksgiving. Then again, many begin saluting friends with “Merry Christmas!” about the time public institutions start holding holiday parties and seasonal concerts — in early December.

In other words, it’s getting harder and harder for Christians who try to practice their faith to answer what was once a simple question: When is Christmas?

“Unfortunately, most Americans — especially evangelical Protestants — have so distanced themselves from any awareness of the Christian calendar that their decisions about that kind of question have been handed over to the culture,” said the Rev. Russell D. Moore, dean of the theology school at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

Many evangelicals fear the “cold formalism” they associate with churches that follow the liturgical calendar, and the result, he said, is “no sense of what happens when in the Christian year, at all.” Thus, instead of celebrating ancient feasts such as Epiphany, Pentecost and the Transfiguration, far too many American church calendars are limited to Christmas and Easter, along with cultural festivities such as Mother’s Day, the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and the Super Bowl.

This year, he added, it will be especially interesting to see how many leaders in “all of those big-box churches” cancel their Sunday morning services instead of daring to clash with family Christmas tree rites in American homes.

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