The annual whine about how the liberals and atheists and Jews are out to sabotage Christmas has become as predictable an event as the anti-fur protesters showing up in the main shopping district of San Francisco the day after Thanksgiving.
Now, I appreciate seasonal traditions, up to a point. My problems with this one are (1) it's silly and (2) it's dishonest.
The caustic and funny James Wolcott (Christmas Kvetchers 12/18/04) points out both:
This "fear of Christmas" is a phantom menace conjured every year so that certain crybaby Christians can adopt victim status and model a pained expression over the sad fact that not everyone around them isn't carrying on like the Cratchits. This thin-skinned grievance-collecting gives birth to all sorts of urban legends and rumors about big institutions being hostile to Christ's birthday, such as the one that swirled on WOR radio last week about how Macy's employees had been instructed not to say "Merry Christmas!" to shoppers. A fiction that was put to rest when the host hit Macy's website and saw its "Merry Christmas" greeting, and Macy's employees chimed in over the phones to say there was no such policy. To read conservative pundits, you'd think everybody was wishing each other Happy Kwanzaa! and averting their eyes from oh so gauche Nativity scenes. I've got news: Even here on the godless, liberal Upper West Side [of New York City], people wish each other Merry Christmas without staggering three steps backward, thunderstruck and covered with chagrin.
As does CJR Campaign Desk: It's Christmas, and the Echo Chamber Is in Full Chorus by Paul McLeary 12/22/04:
Stories about banned Christmas carols and employers forbidding the use of "Merry Christmas" in favor of "Happy Holidays" seem to pop up each December. Over the past few days, however, the issue has been moved front and center by a hungry press, with stories popping up in the national media almost daily, and conservative television host Bill O'Reilly running a daily segment titled "Christmas Under Siege."
But wade through the wall-to-wall coverage of the story, and it becomes apparent that thereare only a handful of examples -- three, to be exact -- being recycled in article after article. Many ofthese pieces use the same incidents in almost the same way. Some even hit for the cycle, as USA Today did today, referencing all three stories in one shot.
That was via Kevin Drum (Siege Warfare 12/23/04), who also comments on the "silly" part:
I'm accustomed to the annual fights over nativity scenes and giant menorahs on public property, but can we please knock off the "Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays" foolishness? Does absolutely everything have to be a political statement these days? In the past, I used these phrases pretty much interchangeably, but this year I suddenly feel self conscious about it. Don't we have bigger and better things to worry about?
3 comments:
This is one of those things that bothers me. Why is it suddenly such a big deal that we wish everyone a "Merry Christmas"? In the past, I didn't think much about it. In a business setting (most of my jobs have always been in retail) I generally said "Have a happy holiday" unless I KNEW they celebrated Christmas. Not out of any wish to take Jesus out of the season, only because I know not everyone is celebrating his birth. But "Happy Holidays" is pretty safe, because nearly everyone has a holiday to celebrate around this time of year, even if it's just New Years! And then there are those Christians who don't celebrate Christmas, Jehovah's Witnesses, for example. I bet they get pretty tired of being wished "Merry Christmas"!
By the way, did you hear about this item (which is local to me, although I was visiting relatives in Atlanta when it happened). http://www.nbc17.com/news/4022285/detail.html
I think most people do the same, Cherie, especially in business settings. I don't know the religious (or political) affiliations of most of the people I work with on a regular basis. Proselytizing at the office is just not appropriate, unless it's some exceptional case of someone who has become a personal friends who is soliciting information or something like that.
And as much as we Christians might reflexively think of Christmas as a generous, generalized holiday, there are Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus for whome the holiday has no religious signficance (although Hindu missionaries to Westerners manage to incorporate it). Why risk annoying them or possibly making yourself feel like a klutz by saying "Merry Christmas" if you have no idea if they even celebrate Christmas?
Not that many people are actually offended by being wished "Merry Christmas."
In one of my Christmas posts, I talked about the longtime suspicion among Christians that still reoccurs about Christmas being too "pagan" a holiday. This obsessing over "Happy Holidays" - from conservatives who chronically accuse liberals of being too insistent of "politically correct" words - can be seen as a mild form of that puritan suspicion of Christmas. (As I noted in that earlier post, the Puritans really were suspicious of Christmas.) - Bruce
Personally, I have wished those with whom I've come in contact a "Merry Christmas" regardless of what I suppose their religious affiliations to be. To wish someone a "Merry Christmas" is no different than to say "God bless you" when he sneezes. It is a blessing - a blessing for that which the holday portends - peace, love and joy.
And as far as not wishing the Jehovah's Witnesses a "Merry Christmas," I still do it all the same. For their desire to not "celebrate" the holdiay stems from their belief that Christmas is a Pagan holiday entirely. I can appreciate that; however, they still celebrate things such as baby showers, wedding anniversaries, honeymoons and "traditional" weddings which are all heavily steeped within Pagan traditions (i.e. the color blue for baby boys, wedding rings as a whole, bridal veils, bridal parties, throwing rice (bird seed), and so on).
So I don't think twice about wishing someone a "Merry Christmas." They can take it or leave it.
Shalom.
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