Whither Christmas?

I'm going to get a bit controversial here. Bear with me; this is an actual thought process, not some baseless attack.

This was prompted by a news story that certain religious (and Republican) groups are up in arms that the White House is sending our "holiday" cards rather than Christmas cards. According to the article, the White House is not the only target: big retailers and merchandisers who dare proclaim "Holiday Sale" or "Winter Sale" rather than "Christmas Sale" are accused of whitewashing Christmas out of the picture.

This, in my humble opinion, is bullshit.

No, this is not just some knee-jerk leftist reaction. Seriously. I have reasons.

First is, in fact, the classic knee-jerk leftist reaction: It's not just Christmas. Sure Christmas falls around this time each year, but so does Hannukah (however you spell it -- I've seen so many variations), just as an example. So to have the whole December "holiday season" co-opted by Christianity is ludicrous. What, Jewish people don't want to take advantage of December sales too? (That sentence comes across more racist/stereotypically then it's meant -- take it in context, please!)

I know, I know, this country is overwhelmingly Christian and believes in some sort of Christ's birth story around this time of year. To turn a once-popular refrain around, "Do you have to be so in-my-face about it?" The irony is that that question used to be used regularly as a generalized platitude toward gays and homosexuality: "I'm okay with you being gay, but you don't have to flaunt it." Well take your Christianity and practice it at home and at church, where it belongs, and feel free to stop forcing the rest of us to see "Christmas" signs in stores and on seasonal cards. (The same goes for ginormous granite slabs dispaying the Ten Commandments, by the way. If you need to put up such huge displays to shout out to the world how "religious" you are, news flash is, you're really not. At all.)

Second, I would think that it's more desireable to not have "Christmas" plastered all over everything and anything related to the winter holidays. If you truly want to celebrate "Christmas" as a religious holiday -- a celebration of the Christ's birth, etc. -- then putting up the word "Christmas" anywhere and everywhere doesn't serve that purpose. The word "Christmas" has now taken on a generic flair. Even people who aren't Christian can refer to things like "Christmas Break" and not give a rat's ass about Jesus Christ. Is this really what Christian activists want? For the word "Christmas" to so generically refer to this time of year that no one really cares about the religious significance of it?

As it is now, lots of people exchange Christmas gifts in December just because it's such an ingrained tradition. Compare the number of people who give gifts with the number of people who attend church, or who bother to take any time at all to acknowledge the religious significance of the date: you'll probably find the margin to be pretty small. Is "religion" any better served by making everyone call it Christmas even if no one really celebrates it as a religious day?

Not a great analogy, but try this: There was a time when "Xerox" was a copyrighted brand name. Okay, it still is, but now we generically say we need to "Xerox" something even when we're using, say, a Canon copier. I think it loses the strength of the trademark to become so generic. Xerox Corporation could go out of business tomorrow and, while their presence would be missed in the corporate landscape, I'm sure we'd continue to say we needed a bunch of documents "xeroxed." Would anyone care about the history of the word and how Xerox once dominated the market for paper copies? Not really.

So my advice (not that you asked for it) to all these religious zealots whining about the loss of "Christmas": get the stick out of your collective asses. It's your holiday; celebrate it as you see fit, and stop making the rest of the country have to bend to your terms. In the end, for many of The Rest of Us, it's just another day.

UPDATE: If you like this post, you have to check out Janet's post on this topic. Janet comments on this post below.