The other day at work, I ended a routine business transaction with the words “happy holidays.” The client, who had been perfectly pleasant up to that very moment, glared back at me. After a short but uncomfortable pause, she responded “merry Christmas” (heavy emphasis on the first syllable in “Christmas”). Further clarifying her already unambiguous point, she lifted the lapel of her jacket to revel a pin with the word “Jesus” in big black letters, surrounded by festive sprigs of holly.
Like a child playing in a long forgotten minefield, I had stumbled directly into the War on Christmas.
My seasonal well-wishing was completely sincere (as sincere as I get during business hours, anyway), but I had obviously offended this woman. I wasn’t being politically correct, I was being expedient. “Happy holidays” is a quick way to wish someone both a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, a verbal time saver. What holidays did this woman think I was referring to? Hanukkah was two weeks ago, and Kwanzaa is only celebrated by three people in the entire country, all of them African American Studies professors.
Conservative Christians love to believe that they’re a persecuted minority, ignoring the fact that they’ve been the ones holding the torches for the past 1500 years. This is never more apparent than during the holiday season, when roadside churches erect signs demanding that passing motorists keep the Christ in Christmas and true believers deliver the Lord’s wrath to heathens who dare wish them Season’s Greetings. Atheists started this fight with lawsuits over town square nativity scenes, but, as the years have passed, the conservative media has rallied the faithful into an all out armchair crusade. Righteous indignation is the new Christmas Caroling.
The irony of all this is that Christmas isn’t really a Christian holiday at all.
If I told you that — at this very moment — religious clerics were dispatching thousands of paid workers to pose as volunteers and solicit donations from busy holiday shoppers, it might cause you to raise an eyebrow in concern. This shadowy sect espouses radical theology and has actively worked to undermine many of the personal freedoms we enjoy here in the U.S. Worst of all, you have most likely already given them a donation this year.
