CHRISTMAS IS NOT "THE HOLIDAYS"

by Linda Burton

"I'm dreaming of a white holiday?" "Have yourself a merry little holiday?" "Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good night?"

When is this genericizing of the Christmas, yes Christmas, season going to stop? If one more terribly sensitive, multi-culturally-aware human being insists on wishing me a Happy Holidays instead of a Merry Christmas, I'm going to turn around and knock him on his politically-impeccable behind.

I am, you see, getting to feel unusually protective about Christmas, because for the past few years, it feels as if this extraordinary celebration has been slipping inexorably away from us.

First, there were the public-school children arriving home with turgid little notes in their backpacks, informing parents that the school's annual Christmas party would be replaced with a vague sort of "winter" party, in deference to those children who did not honor Christmas in their own homes. In addition, the note stated, the children would not be allowed to make Christmas decorations, learn Christmas songs, or perform in any Christmas pageant at school.

To most parents, who entertained festive memories of their own school Christmas parties past, this action seemed excessive and a bit mean-spirited. Blot-out Christmas and restrict recognition of the season? We didn't like the idea a bit.

Then, both public and private business offices began phasing out their own traditional Christmas parties, in favor of similar "less offensive" "winter" parties. To many employees, however, these somewhat directionless, impersonal get-togethers appeared more of an excuse to drink seasonal libations and leave work early, than they were an expression of old-fashioned Christmas season ebullience and warmth.

Even the greeting card industry, upon which we have always relied for huge assortments of Christmas cards, napkins, gift bags, and so on, seems to have taken up the trend toward de-Christmasing the season, because it's getting pretty tough to find a decent "Merry Christmas" card today. Instead, we find a host of "Happy Holidays" cards, bordered with holly motifs or some other non-specific, winter-type graphic.

There used to be nothing quite as bracing as the hearty "Merry Christmas" we grew used to hearing while out shopping for gifts, from everyone who was behind a shop counter or near a Salvation Army bell. But that, too, has evolved to the considerably less hearty, though infinitely more correct, "Happy Holidays."

Do you know why we are making all these cheerless, colorless changes in the traditional Christmas season, even though almost nobody really wants to make them? We are making all these miserable changes so that 5 percent of the United States population is not offended. This is correct. According to a string of national studies completed over the past several years by the likes of CNN/USA Today, the Gallup Organization, and Fox News, as much as 95 percent of the United States population celebrates Christmas. The remaining 5 percent either celebrate Hanukkah, Something Else, or nothing at all.

So why is 95 percent of the population deferring to 5 percent of the population? Why are we putting the wraps on a holiday which a landslide of Americans have always held so dear, so that 5 percent of Americans don't feel left out for 12 days of the year?

Christmas has never been unjustly cast as the favored teacher’s pet among other, equally important winter holidays in America. The spiritual importance of Christmas truly stands alone in December; most Jewish people will readily confirm that they have other holidays such as Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur which are spiritually much more significant than Hanukkah.

I personally grew up in a Jewish community, and I have participated in and greatly enjoyed Hanukkah festivities for many years. But there is no reason why we must de-emphasize Christmas in order to include Hanukkah celebrations. Wouldn't recognizing and personalizing both experiences in our public arenas make everyone the richer and more hopeful as the new year is about to begin?

Likewise, much of the explanatory literature I have read about the recently coined African-American holiday, “Kwanzaa,” takes extraordinary care to point out that “Kwanzaa is in no way a religious holiday or an ethnic replacement for the Christmas holiday.” How can we possibly justify giving these holidays equal time or ignoring Christmas altogether?

I agree wholeheartedly that taking time in our schools to discuss the truly important spiritual festivals of others at the appropriate time of year can be eye-opening and enriching for our children, stimulating new avenues of thought and dynamic intellectual discussion.

But I find it disturbing to hear of the growing number of American public school superintendents who actively encourage their teachers to teach the religious details of African, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish holidays, while explicitly forbidding them to teach anything but the secular aspects of Christian holidays.

Choosing to ignore or to spiritually homogenize Christmas is neither a benign nor a neutral decision by these administrators. Rather, it is complicitly agreeing to aid and abet an unconscionable lie of omission.

Religion, despite its Constitutional separation from the State, should not be reduced to Brand X in this country. Ceremonies involving religion, particularly those which have clearly helped to define the character of a nation, cannot be forced into a non-existent posture for long, without de-energizing the country which they have helped to nourish for over two centuries. America unquestionably continues to need that nourishment today.

Just take a look at some of the superficialities we are being induced to celebrate instead of Christmas: the weather...someone’s skin color...frost and glitter...the shortest day of the year. “Hey kids, the shortest day of the year is coming, so we’re giving you two weeks off from school!”

I’m sorry, folks, but Christmas is just plain Christmas, and you can call it Sparkle Season or the Winter Solstice, or Winter Holidays, or some other off-target and cowardly name-moderne, but 95 per cent of us will still celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in the same traditional and unchanged, old-fashioned way.

 

Linda Burton is a native Virginian and mother of four children now residing in the Midwest. She actively participated in theater in the Washington, D.C. area where she played major roles, with a special affection for musical comedy and Restoration Theater. She has been a contributing columnist for several newspapers and for the New York Times Syndicate. Her work has appeared in Reader’s Digest, Family Circle, The Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor, among others. She loves music, reading firsthand history, and visiting her adult children.