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Caterwauling About Christmas
Those caterwauling about Christmas this year seem less focused on crèches darkening courthouse lawns, though no doubt some quake as ever at that prospect. Their current focus is rather convoluted: to mock Christians who complain that the term "Merry Christmas" is being replaced by "Happy Holidays" in many department store ads and displays this "Holiday Season." They defend this slight-of-hand by explaining that diverse clientele shouldn't have to see one holiday favored over others as they shop, as if Christians had recently forced everyone to start calling "The Holidays" Christmas. In public elementary school I dressed up as a Jew in the annual Christmas play until 1964, when we had to stop offending the non-Christian 5% of the general population. It was unclear to me how portraying our Jewish heroes might have offended Jews. I don't recall there being any atheists in my school, and Kwanza had yet to be made up. It was hard for us to know how we had offended whom. So the injured parties, like Communist Madeline Murray, must have been much more eager to take offense than we were to give it. At any rate, we just let it go. President Kennedy had burned into our minds the hard truth that life is unfair. Apparently it wasn't enough to run Christian faith off of public grounds. The new frontier is malls, shopping centers, ads in magazines and on TV: in other words, denuding private enterprise of any references to Christ. Is there really a hue and cry from people seeing "Merry Christmas" in ads, though? Could anyone take seriously a Muslim’s alarm at hearing a greeter at Wal-Mart say, "Merry Christmas"? Buddhists aren’t supposed to care about anything, Bahá’ís are happy with practically everything, and if Hindus are miserable they think they deserve it, so who is left to complain about Christian words and symbols at the mall? Only those in dire need of taking offense. It is not wellwishers at the mall but those who would silence them that are offensive, who need better manners and a history lesson. Be assured that had their ideological forebears founded this nation instead of ours, we would have more than the loss of some Christmas verbiage in ads to fear from their intolerance. So for those merchants who respect the village atheist more than the village, I have some questions. Where did anyone get the idea to buy stuff from you and give it to others in December? Which holiday has been celebrated like this for centuries? If you answered those questions honestly, why can you not recognize the simple truth that Jesus is the reason for the season, and wish us Merry Christmas? If the businesses that turned Christmas into a grabfest can no more stand to associate Christ with their moneygrubbing, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise and signals a new, less materialistic era. When cultural Marxists first began removing the Bible, prayer and Christian symbols from public spaces, befuddled Christians conceded ground they initially didn't know how to defend. Soon however, we called a halt to our retreat, re-evaluated the terrain, and are returning to reclaim our territory. We win some battles and we lose some, but God is on our side, not theirs. To my comrades I say, Merry Christmas. The Rev. John
M. Campbell |
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