“Merry Christmas” as a greeting or as a cheerful blessing of citizen-to-citizen or neighbor-to-neighbor is vanishing.  Invariably, when I wish someone in a store or in my neighborhood a Merry Christmas, they respond by saying “Happy Holidays” to me.   One woman suggested to me that Christmas was religion-specific and not all people celebrate it, which is why she uses what she believes is a more neutral term.  In other words, she believes she is being kind and showing a gentle respect for all people whether they be Christian or not.  She obviously did not understand that by not responding to my Merry Christmas, she was not obliging me, not showing me the “respect” that she is according to all others who give not even a passing thought to the birth of Christ. Christians are getting her much-needed greeting, but she will deny them any sense of preference.  My “Merry Christmas” to her is partisan and self-absorbed, lacking the largesse of the more neutral well wishes.

The irony of this shift away from “religious preference” is that for most Americans Christmas has been distinctly irreligious for decades.  As long ago as the 1960s -- long before this writer became an evangelical believer -- some of my best friends complained at the materialism of our culture. They were disturbed that Christmas had become about trees, lights, gifts, Santa Claus, and meals.  At best, it was about togetherness. At worst, it indulged a commercialism that only Americans have really known.  Spirituality was trumped by materialism.  But my philosophical friends not only said we were mired in materialism but in runaway materialism.  That was decades ago.  For them, Christmas had lost its “spiritual meaning” by that decade.  When did this spiritual decline begin?  I was not interested in the religious significance of the holiday so I never asked for their historical assessment.

Yet, by the 1980s as I became increasingly disillusioned with the world and with my own pretensions, I went to a Christmas Eve service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.  It was a service of great beauty with choral arrangements that called all present to seek Heaven.  The sermon by Cardinal John O’Connor contrasted the emphasis of Christmas on Christ’s birth with our own culture of death with abortion as its centerpiece.  At that service, it was clear to me that there was a sharp contrast between the Christian understanding of Christmas and the broader American consumerist understanding.

So, in the minds of many, they are remaining neutral, that is, they are not taking sides of one religion against others.  This understanding of the word “neutral” of course assumes that other religions feel oppressed by Christmas as a Christian holiday as though the celebration of Christmas is a subtle or even not-so-subtle way for Christians to thumb their noses at other religions.  Although I grew up in a Jewish household, my parents never felt either threatened by Christian “exclusion” nor that it was a season of hostility towards Jews, and thus did not believe they needed to barricade either themselves or me from Christmas. The message of joy, love, and hope -- although originating in Christ -- overflowed to all of us, and the welcome that my parents’ parents had experienced in flight from persecution in Europe to a welcoming America completely overshadowed any sense of rejection.  We exchanged gifts on Christmas, and the presents carried the greeting “Happy Chanukah and Merry Christmas.”  Celebrating both together carried no threat, no fear, no doubts, no confusion, and no perplexity.  Our First Amendment right to freedom of religion was in no way undermined by “Merry Christmas” nor did we feel like second-class citizens.  Christmas was part of our welcome into the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Therefore, it becomes necessary to question the motives of the many citizens who want to deny the encompassing love, welcome, hope, and joy that Christmas embraces even though those qualities are often overshadowed by the obsessive materialism of our culture.  They see themselves as righteously “neutral,” but the word neutral also has a military meaning where plans are made to neutralize an enemy position. In this sense of the word neutralize, the word means to “get rid of (someone who may be a threat) by killing.”  The refusal to utter the words of hope, peace, and love that characterized this season for hundreds of years is more likely motivated by a desire to eliminate Christianity in its essence by passively rejecting the theological assumptions of the holiday, and, more importantly, by relegating Christmas values to the storage bin of history and diluting the values which it espouses.

Whenever we hear “happy holidays,” it is a passive vote against hope, love, joy, and truth.  It is an implied rejection of truth.  It expresses complacency and superficiality. It advances bland materialism, and may unwittingly be lending support to the evil that has begun to pervade society.  Saying Merry Christmas has become an honorable way of self-labelling one’s commitment to rejecting a woke and dysfunctional society.

Image: Infrogmation