Other than the hot, hot days of summer, Christmas is my favorite time of year. I love Christmas lights and decorating a tree and shopping for presents. I love celebrating Advent in a greenery-draped church and singing carols as the Christmas lights glow bright around us. And most definitely, I love Christmas Eve services, when we gather around a Nativity to celebrate Jesus' birth.

Yet, even though I love Christmas and all its decorating splendor, I'm convinced Christmas displays should not appear in government-owned spaces. Nativities and other Christian symbols of Christmas don't belong in state capitols, in courthouses, in city parks. More accurately, it is because I am a Christian that I am convinced the government should not be celebrating Jesus' birth.

Somewhere in the country every year, though, conflicts flame about the presence of Christian-specific decorations in government spaces. Washington state is among the latest to enter the fray, with atheist and Christian groups duking it out over decorating the Capitol building. Some claim that government organizations should be free to include Nativities in their Christmas displays, while others argue that doing so violates the Constitution's First Amendment. The battles have in places become so fierce that some on the right -- such as the Liberty Counsel and Fox television commentator Bill O'Reilly -- have declared that there's a "War on Christmas," claiming that secularists are trying to destroy "the reason for the season."

Not only do I believe the Prince of Peace would reject any militaristic language about "war" over his birth, I'm also convinced that Christians should not engage in crusades about Christmas decorations in the public square. For while O'Reilly and gang blame the Christmas war on secularists, it's important to remember that many Christians are also strong proponents of the separation of church and state, and believe that the government has no business endorsing Christianity, either explicitly or implicitly. Yet by placing Nativities in capitol buildings and city parks, the government is advocating for Christianity to the exclusion of other faiths embraced by its citizens.

The reasons for my own beliefs are complicated, wrapped as they are in my church denomination's history of persecution by church-states, where refusing to worship as a Catholic or Lutheran sometimes meant punishment and death. The martyrdom of Anabaptists in Europe led them to believe wholly in the need for separation between church and state entities, and they carried this conviction with them as they fled the persecution of one church-state, and then others.

I grew up hearing this history of martyrdom, and learned -- almost by osmosis, it seemed -- that the U.S. Constitution ensured that which the Mennonites held dear: that the church and the state would remain separate.

Of course, there are many who believe the First Amendment has been misconstrued, and that government displays of religious symbols don't violate the church/state separation. And the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the 1980s that government bodies could place Christian symbols alongside other secular holiday exhibits, so that Frosty the Snowman can stand beside a Nativity, or Rudolph beside a menorah.

But I wonder why such government displays are even necessary. Putting aside arguments about the First Amendment and church/state separation, do Christians really need baby Jesus on the courthouse steps to remind them of his birth? If the answer is yes, then perhaps that says more about their faith (or faithlessness) than it does about Christmas decorations or the Constitution.

And if people want Nativities in government spaces to remind non-Christians about "the reason for the season," that seems like evangelism, an act in which the government should play no role. After all, if Christians were a minority faith -- as my Mennonite ancestors were in Europe several centuries ago -- I imagine they would not wish to be evangelized by those in the majority, be they Muslims or Jews or Hare Krishnas. Purposefully, our Constitution means we'll never have to face that threat.

Mostly, though, I long to keep the sacred just that: sacred. The focus of every Christian should on the real manger, rather than on whether Nativities should appear in the public square, pressed up next to Santa and the elves. To believe and act otherwise -- that we need to fight some presumed war on Christmas by putting Christian displays in government spaces -- cheapens what should be the central focus of a Christian's adoration: the birth of a savior.

Melanie Springer Mock is an associate professor of writing and literature at George Fox University in Newberg.