Jillian Rayfield December 17, 2010, 1:49 PM

Sen. Jim DeMint and Jon Kyl would have you believe that its “sacrilegious” to hold so many votes around Christmas time. Not according to a number of Christian leaders, who harshly criticized the Republicans for invoking Christmas as an excuse to avoid votes.

As we reported, Kyl (AZ) said this week that it’s “impossible” to get through the Democrats’ full lame duck agenda “without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians and the families of all of the Senate.” DeMint followed suit and called the “jamming” in the votes “sacrilegious.”

Burns Strider, previously the Senior Advisor and Director of Faith Outreach to then-Sen.-Hillary Clinton, wrote on the Huffington Post: “While American troops will be working through the Christmas holidays, putting their lives on the line for our safety and while millions of Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of the “Prince of Peace,” Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) brazenly choose to distort and manipulate this most holy of days for their own political means.”

Andrea Nill of Wonk Room reports that Pastor Troy Jackson, of the University Christian Church of Ohio, said he “didn’t realize our elected officials had Christmas break like elementary and high school kids do.”

And then there’s Rev. Jerry Dykstra, Executive Director of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, who told Wonk Room: “Jesus, who was a high respecter of the Sabbath — which was not simply a national or religious holiday, but was their day of complete rest in his own culture — said that on the Sabbath we need to do what is right. If doing what is right means that we have to work through a Christmas holiday, then by all means we work through a Christmas holiday.”

Jim DeMint, Jon Kyl, War On Christmas