So are we doing “Merry Christmas” or “Happy holidays” or what?

  • You know, I’m a sim­ple woman with sim­ple needs. Can some­one just tell me once and for all if I’m sup­posed to get mad over bogus PC expres­sions like “Happy hol­i­days” and “Season’s greet­ings” or not?

    Things like this (via Orthodixie) try to tell us to be good with, y’know, what­ever, and not to let skunks like Bill O’Reilly call the shots. Cer­tainly not when we could be let­ting the LA Times call the shots instead:

    The Who Chris­tians will think that they fight the good fight,
    They won’t know that they’re pup­pets of the Fox-ville Far Right.
    They’ll for­get all that DRIVEL about faith, hope and LOVE
    And say ‘Merry Christ­mas’ with a sneer and a shove.

    And this New York Times story tries to some­how say that Chris­tians who want to hear “Merry Christ­mas” are pro­mot­ing a more com­mer­cial­ized Christ­mas. What? Don’t ask me, I couldn’t fol­low it either. One minute they were going along about the hol­i­day not being cel­e­brated by Puri­tans (memo to NYT: the only ones who think that Chris­tians iden­tify strongly with the Puri­tans are non-Christians), and then … I don’t know, they just couldn’t stand it any­more and spent the last cou­ple para­graphs trash-talking poor old Bill O’Reilly again as if he’s to blame for a decades-old fight:

    The Christ­mas that Mr. O’Reilly and his allies are pro­mot­ing — one closely aligned with retail­ers, with a smack-down atti­tude toward nonob­servers — fits with their cam­paign to make Amer­ica more like a theoc­racy, with Chris­t­ian dis­plays on pub­lic prop­erty and Chris­t­ian prayer in pub­lic schools.

    It does not, how­ever, appear to be catch­ing on with the pub­lic. That may be because most Amer­i­cans do not rec­og­nize this com­mer­cial­ized, mean-spirited Christ­mas as their own.

    Wellll, yes and no. I don’t care for the New York Times sud­denly adopt­ing the role of Bible camp coun­selor, though they’re cer­tainly enti­tled to their opin­ion. And the fact is, I’m not a great fan of Bill O’Reilly and have wished he wouldn’t treat this like another chance to show that he’s “look­ing out for us” — what­ever that means.

    But it seems a lit­tle ungra­cious to get mad at him — or Sean Han­nity or Mel Gib­son or any of the other high-profile cru­saders who have seen fit to make a stink out of this — as if Chris­tians haven’t been agi­tat­ing about it for a long time. I don’t know how much credit those guys deserve, but the fact is, this is the first time I remem­ber in years that I have had folks at the store wish me a merry Christmas.

    And I like it. It makes my heart happy. I don’t think that by say­ing that they are say­ing, “Jesus Christ is our Lord and King — He is born in my heart and I glo­rify Him with you!” On the other hand, nei­ther are they say­ing, “Happy, y’know, noth­ing what­so­ever. Unless you don’t even want one of those, in which case, I sup­port you and live in fear of your wrath.”

    I sup­pose I still remem­ber many unhappy Advent sea­sons work­ing as an artist for var­i­ous news­pa­pers when I would be told to remove the dreaded “M**** C********” from ads not because the sales rep objected, or the client objected, but because some­body thought that some­body might object. Yes, I did con­sole myself by think­ing that maybe hav­ing the name of the fes­ti­val on an adver­tise­ment wasn’t appro­pri­ate, but in hav­ing to remove it wher­ever it occurred — and worse, in even­tu­ally get­ting to the place where I cen­sored it with­out being told — I never could rid myself of the idea that I was par­tic­i­pat­ing in the slow elim­i­na­tion of reli­gious expres­sion every­where. Ads aren’t evan­gel­i­cal tools, but what­ever they are, they’re a totally com­mon part of our cul­ture, and the only other things that are elim­i­nated from ads are things that are deemed unfit, unwhole­some and morally repugnant.

    So I guess I kind of love if it is finally okay to say “Merry Christ­mas” again. I wouldn’t boy­cott a store over it if they didn’t, but unlike some who have com­mented, I don’t think I would be upset if I lived in a dif­fer­ent coun­try and there was a com­mon sea­sonal greet­ing that didn’t reflect my beliefs. Nei­ther do I think I would have a huge prob­lem with the expres­sion if I were Jew­ish and liv­ing here.

    So … Merry Christ­mas, every­one! Seriously!


    Related posts:

    1. Get­ting all Christmas-d up here
    2. The shame­ful story has a happy ending
    3. Dumb Christ­mas presents
    4. Happy (belated) Blog-o-versary to me
    5. On curios­ity

    December 17th, 2005 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Fr. Tim 12.17.2005

    Grace:
    Christ is born!
    Fr. Tim

  • Grace

    Glo­rify Him!

    (Sorry I didn’t respond ear­lier, Father. For some rea­son, the com­ment didn’t show up in my inbox until now. )

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