Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders turned a holiday email to state employees into a Christian sermon

Sanders' proclamation violated the idea of church/state separation by treating Christian doctrine as state policy

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Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders never misses an opportunity to shove her religion in everyone else’s faces, and the holiday season is no exception.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (screenshot via YouTube)

In an email proclaiming that state employees would have Christmas Day and the day after that off—which would not be weird at all—she told them that they should use that time with their families “giving thanks for Christ’s birth.” It was a religious mandate so blunt that you don’t have to do much work to realize how inappropriate it is. Just replace Christian mythology with any other religion’s beliefs and it would be obvious.

TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS COME – GREETINGS:

WHEREAS: More than two millennia ago in the little town of Bethlehem, far from the centers of power in first-century Rome, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born in a humble manger;

WHEREAS: Jesus was the Messiah and became a teacher and leader, and He would be crucified, suffer for the sins of all mankind, die and be buried, and rise again on the third day to sit at the right hand of the Father;

WHEREAS: But on that first Christmas, Christ’s arrival was unassuming, witnessed only by Mary and Joseph, humble shepherds guided by angels, and three wise men from the East. It presaged his ministry, which was not focused on the wealthy or powerful but rather on the poor, powerless, and meek; and

WHEREAS: We give thanks for the arrival of Christ the Savior, who will come again in glory and whose kingdom will have no end, by celebrating His birth each year on Christmas Day.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, Governor of the State of Arkansas, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the laws of the State of Arkansas, do hereby proclaim December 25, 2025, as

“CHRISTMAS DAY”

in the State of Arkansas, and in order that state employees may spend this holiday with their families giving thanks for Christ’s birth, I further declare the State Capitol and state offices will be closed on Friday, December 26, 2025, as well.

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of Arkansas to be affixed this 16th day of December, in the year of our Lord 2025.

There you have it, state workers who aren’t Christian. Take a couple of days off and honor Sanders’ God.

Needless to say, it’s completely inappropriate for a governor to issue a proclamation pretending that her brand of religion is factual by preceding the story with a bunch of “Whereas” clauses. The press release is also unnecessary. She can just say employees have the two days off without bringing God into it, but promoting religion from her office is her only tangible accomplishment.

Despite knowing (I assume) that it won’t make a difference, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent her a letter urging her not to use sectarian language in official pronouncements:

… Rather than focusing on administrative scheduling or the broadly observed secular cultural aspects of the holiday, the proclamation gives a detailed theological narrative presenting core Christian doctrines, including the divinity of Jesus Christ, his crucifixion for the sins of mankind, his resurrection, and his anticipated return “in glory” as government-supported facts.

We request that in the future you refrain from using your position as governor to promote your personal religious beliefs. You are free to practice your religion in your personal capacity, but you cannot abuse your position as a government official and use government resources to demand state employees spend Christmas “giving thanks for Christ’s birth” or proclaim it is the official position of the state of Arkansas that Christian mythology is true.

They also urged her to think about people other than herself:

… You serve a religiously diverse state that consists not only of Christians, but also Jewish, Muslim, atheist and other non-Christian constituents. When you promote Christianity through official actions, you needlessly alienate those constituents who are part of the 38 percent of Americans who are non-Christian, including the nearly one-in-three Americans who are now religiously unaffiliated.

Finally, they asked her to rescind the proclamation and avoid making similar ones in the future.

And Sanders responded with calm and respect and promised it wouldn’t happen again… and I’m just kidding. She flipped out and acted like she was a victim of religious persecution and insisting she would “do no such thing.”

… 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. 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.

Though you may enter this season with bitterness, know that Christ is with you, that He loves you, and that He died for your sins just the same as He did for mine and everyone else’s.

It’s almost comical that she’s talking about “poor shepherds” and a “humble manger” and avoiding “rich men” in favor of “outcasts” given that the only reason she’s governor is because she spent Donald Trump’s first term promoting his constant grifting and cruelty as his press secretary.

She also accuses FFRF of “bitterness” because they dared to remind her what her job is instead of allowing her to cosplay as a preacher, which is what she clearly wants to do… before trying to convert the FFRF lawyers by falsely insisting Jesus died for them.

Then she claims she’s not “alienating non-Christian constituents” at all because she recently attended a Menorah lighting celebration. So what? Trump is a Christian Nationalist who occasionally pays lip service to other faiths. Doing the bare minimum for some other religions doesn’t give a governor the right to promote her personal faith.

Sanders shared that letter on social media on Monday, while suggesting that FFRF was trying to make her ignore the meaning of Christmas… which is not at all what their letter said. (She can have her delusions, but she has no right to push them on state employees.)

It’s not like this is the only time Sanders has used her office to promote Christianity. In 2023, she also bragged about the stained-glass Christian cross “masterpiece” her children had created in front of the Governor’s Mansion:

And then there are all the political moves she’s made to directly benefit Christians, like okaying a voucher program to send millions of dollars to private religious schools (at the expense of public schools) and firing the State Library Board because they weren’t doing enough to ban books.

Sanders, much like her father, isn’t interested in merely blurring the line between church and state. She doesn’t believe such a line exists at all. By wrapping explicit Christian doctrine in the formal language of a state proclamation, she’s pretending her beliefs are state-sanctioned truths while everyone else’s beliefs are fiction. That violates the constitutional boundaries she swore to uphold. Not that she cares.

Her responses to the criticism only show how she sees all this as a game. Instead of engaging with the substance of what FFRF said, she responded with sanctimony and condescension. By doing that, she’s basically admitting the proclamation was never about giving employees some time off but about declaring which religion matters and which ones don’t. That’s Christian Nationalism in practice. Just because she offered a token gesture to Jews doesn’t excuse any of this.

Either Sanders knows all this and doesn’t care, or she’s too ignorant to know any of it. Neither option is a good one. The former makes her reckless and contemptuous of the law; the latter makes her unfit for office.

A governor is not a preacher. A proclamation is not a sermon. Arkansas isn’t a church. If Sanders can’t accept that, she should resign and find a new line of work.

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