It was just a few nights before Christmas as Pastor Santos Carrasco, smiling broadly, sat in his small storefront church in Echo Park strumming his guitar and singing of God's goodness.
"How good God is. How good he is," Santos sang out in Spanish. "He forgives my sin. How good he is."
But whatever else the pastor would sing that night -- or any other time this week including Saturday or Sunday -- it wouldn't be Christmas carols. Neither Christmas trees nor presents are thought appropriate.
Carrasco and his Christian congregation of 60 mainly Central American immigrants at the Iglesia de Dios La Nueva Jerusalem (Church of God the New Jerusalem) believe in Jesus as Lord. But they don't keep Christmas.
"There is nothing biblical" in the yuletide celebrations, said Carrasco, 56. "And we only practice what Jesus orders us to practice."
What's worse, he continued, Christmas was ungodly, a time of revelry, including drunkenness and "pleasures of the flesh. They are not celebrating God," he said.
Carrasco is not alone. A few Christian churches to this day dismiss Christmas with a polite theological humbug, among them a small number of independent Pentacostal churches such as Carrasco's, and the larger and better known Jehovah's Witnesses. Others, such as the Church of Christ, Scientist, avoid much of the pageantry and merriment.
They used to have more company. Even some major denominations, including Baptists, which today trumpet the birth of Jesus with carols and yuletide symbols, dismissed Christmas as unimportant, even pagan, until the early 19th century. Another was the Pasadena-based Worldwide Church of God, which until a major theological upheaval in 1995 had forbidden its members to celebrate Christmas. Some members then left the church and affiliated with breakaway churches that continue to hold Christmas at bay.
There has long been tension over how Christmas should be observed. But the issue has taken on a new urgency this year among Christian conservatives who are pushing for more explicit recognition of the holiday.
Some groups are calling for boycotts of stores which ring in -- and ring up -- the season with "Happy Holidays" greetings and advertising instead of "Merry Christmas." The Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group in Washington, is promoting a new book by John Gibson called "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought."
