Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended her decision to keep government offices closed on Dec. 26 for the Christmas holiday after coming under fire from a secular advocacy group.
The @FFRF took issue with me closing state offices to celebrate Christmas and sent a letter demanding I rescind my proclamation.
— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) December 22, 2025
Christmas isn’t a just a holiday, it’s the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birth. Meaning matters, we won’t pretend otherwise.
See my response here ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/UciehY3GtS
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) sent a letter to Governor Sanders rebuking her for delivering “an explicitly theological account of the Christian story of Jesus’ birth, divinity, crucifixion, resurrection, and anticipated return.”
Sanders fired back at the organization in a letter posted to X, “Christmas is not simply an ‘end-of-the-year holiday’ with ‘broadly observed secular cultural aspects,’ as your letter states. It’s not gifts, trees, and stockings that make this holiday special. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, and if we are to honor Him properly, we should tell His miraculous, world-changing story properly, too."
“I will end by saying that you missed the point of my proclamation. It was not to browbeat readers with Christian doctrine, but rather to point to the humility of Christ’s birth and to the amazing fact that the King of Kings was born not in a palace or temple, but in a humble manger attended only by poor shepherds,” the letter continued.” “It is in that spirit of humility that I am reminded that Christ did not dine with wise Pharisees or rich men but rather with fishermen and outcasts.”
Sanders continued her response on X:
We closed state offices so families could spend time together at Christmas.
— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) December 22, 2025
Some people objected, and told us we had to strip the holiday of its meaning - the birth of Christ.
We declined. https://t.co/piBldvYUt5
FFRF reportedly isn’t upset due to the additional government holiday, but because Sanders’ decision declared “Christian mythology as fact.”
“Sanders further not only has misused the machinery of the state to promulgate her own personal fundamentalist Christian beliefs, but she has the chutzpah to direct citizen worship — that is, ordering them to ‘give thanks to Jesus,’ an act no public official in the United States has the authority to do,” FFRF official Annie Laurie Gaylor said in a statement. “This is an abuse of power. Despite Sanders’ best efforts, Arkansas is not a Christian theocracy.”
FFRF claims that, “the history of Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion,” and “the first to speak out for prison reform, for humane treatment of the mentally ill, the abolition of capital punishment, women’s right to vote, death with dignity for the terminally ill, and the right to choose contraception, sterilization and abortion have been freethinkers.”
The organization doesn’t seem to have any Western civilization scholars on staff.
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