This week, approximately nine in 10 Americans will celebrate Christmas, in a wide variety of ways. Among Christians, the two groups who share the most in their approach to Christmas celebrations are white and minority evangelical Protestants. These two groups stand apart even from other Christians in that they are significantly more likely to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, to read the Christmas story from the Bible, and to believe that the nativity narrative—including the Virgin birth, the angels communicating with shepherds, the appearance of the star of Bethlehem, and the arrival of wise men from the East—is historically accurate. Majorities of white and minority Protestants also report that they attend religious services on Christmas Day, where they will hear the same stories, light the same Advent candles, and sing the same carols.

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To be sure, especially after the second grand-jury decision in the Eric Garner case, there have been prominent white evangelical Protestant voices speaking up and reaching out to the African-American community. And it is important that these voices have included not only those such as the Reverend Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners who has long been outspoken on racial reconciliation, but also the Reverend Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Moore noted that while he had received some negative responses from fellow white evangelicals that were “right out of the White Citizens’ Council material from 1964 in my home state of Mississippi,” he spoke out because of his own belief that “there is nothing that is clearer in the New Testament than the fact that the gospel breaks down the dividing walls that we have between one another.”