In the last few weeks, as we have as in past Christmases in the last number of years, we hear disheartening stories all around us.

Once those stories were of overt attacks on localities when public property was used to display nativity scenes. Then the stories were about schools that dared to allow students to sing Christmas hymns.

To avoid law suits most schools cowed to pressure and dropped the term Christmas season for such things as Holiday season or simply winter break.

Stores afraid of offending Christmas shoppers instructed employees to wish customers “happy holidays”.

This year, anti-Christians were on the offense again. In one school they banned Snoopy from their “holiday pageant” because the character Linus told the Christmas Story.

Years ago, courts ruled that non-religious Christmas symbols could not be banned, yet offices and schools are now pressured to no longer allow Christmas trees in offices and other places of businesses.

When Islamic terrorists kill Americans all over the country, our federal justice department refuses to immediately identify them as to what they are.

In California it took several days for them to be identified as such.

In Tennessee, in took a year and a half, and at Fort Hood they have yet to come to that conclusion years after the attacks and murders occurred.

Yet government leaders cower from non-Christian faiths, empowering them to place their religion ahead of public safety. While Christian students are told not to bring bibles to school or wear certain clothing, non-Christians rarely are questioned as to what they do or how they behave.

Truly we are now facing challenges to our faith both here and aboard. Some are leaving their churches in record numbers as governing boards of those churches abandon some of the tenets of their faith. Leaving many of our churches half empty and struggling.

This at the same time we are mocked for believing in immaculate conception, claiming this is impossible.

With all of this negativity surrounding us, there is only one thing that protects us. That is our faith.

We are saddened by the attacks on our faith, but it makes us stronger as we face all the challenges that are being thrown at us.

We must continue to work to maintain our faith as individuals, as families, as churches, as communities, and as a nation.

From our family to yours, we wish you a Merry Christmas.

Frank Ruff, a Republican, represents Lunenburg County in the Virginia State Senate. His email address is Sen.Ruff@verizon.net.