There’s been a concerted effort to steal Christmas.

Falwell’s line frames perceived cultural and institutional shifts—such as replacing explicitly Christian language (“Christmas”) with more generic seasonal greetings—as an organized campaign rather than a diffuse social change. The rhetoric of a “concerted effort” implies coordination and intent, heightening a sense of threat and urgency among listeners. In this reading, “steal Christmas” functions less as a literal claim about the holiday’s disappearance than as a metaphor for the loss of public religious expression and the marginalization of Christian identity in civic and commercial spaces. The quote exemplifies late–20th/early–21st-century U.S. culture-war discourse, where symbolic language becomes a proxy for broader debates about pluralism, secularism, and the role of religion in public life.