The "War" on Christmas

The American version of Christmas is pretty complex. While it centers on the birth of Jesus, and while many of the icons and much of the music refers to Him, other figures like Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and presents have become very important.

As early as mid-summer, stores have sales based on the Christmas theme. Around Labor Day, sections in some stores are decked out in reds and greens in anticipation of Christmas, usually containing toys and home decorations for the holidays. Gradually, over the weeks between Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving, nearly all the stores get serious about displays and setting up their holiday merchandising. The day after Thanksgiving has traditionally been the biggest shopping day of the year.

That same day is often when lights and decorations put up between Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving in the business sections of town or on private homes are lit at night. In addition, some radio stations begin to play Christmas music 24/7.

Most churches join in with the pre-holiday festivities. Many add a life-size scene on their grounds including a barn-like setting, a feed trough for cattle, a mother and father, a baby, some farm animals, sometimes some shepherds, and sometimes some oriental wisemen, They may be plastic statues or they may be live.

Therefore, during the late fall and early winter, America prepares for the celebration of Christmas. For more than a month, folks have around them the sights and symbols and sounds of the season.

In the late 1950s, a movement started to counter the commercialism surrounding the holiday. The first thing challenged was the use of X in an abbreviated form of the word Christmas (Xmas). The X is the Greek Letter “Chi,” and was used in ancient manuscripts as shorthand for the word “Christ.” But since most people do not know that, the movement succeeded in eliminating that usage.

Now it is common this time of year to see “Put Christ back into Christmas.” The intent is to refocus people to be sure that “Jesus is the reason for the season.”

In the 1960s, satirists also took a shot at the practice of businesses using the music and icons of Christmas in advertising. Some of the more gross ads showing Santa smoking cigarettes have not appeared in magazines or on TV since then, though Americans tolerate nearly everything else.

The wedding of commerce and the celebration of the birth of Christ has not ended in divorce like it did in the Puritan eras in Massachusetts Bay Colony or in Cromwell’s England during the 1600s.

However, that does not mean that there haven’t been controversies related to the holidays in recent years.

With cable news channels running all day every day, some commentators have become famous for raising the specter that atheists are trying to eliminate the celebration of Christmas altogether. They point to situations where public schools are challenged for changing their annual seasonal music programs to drop direct references to Jesus. They are also angered when atheists are allowed to put up displays on public property along side Christian displays.

The personalities making the biggest fuss call such events “battlegrounds of the war on Christmas.”

And once in awhile it does appear that some of the decisions to change Christmas into a more generic “holiday” do not make sense. Removing absolutely everything related to the Christian religion from public buildings and schools seems like a little over much.

The problem public officials face is that America is not just Christian but is also Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and any number of other faiths. America has always had diverse religious groups. Many times, because the major religious tradition has been Christian, its celebration has been enforced to the extent that failure to participate in the Christmas music programs in school affected the grades of those who for reasons of religious conscience could not participate.

The Constitution of the United States calls for the free expression of religion with the state not being allowed to support any one faith. That was made fundamental law for America to prevent forcing non-Christians into performing Christian acts. The early leaders in America had seen how such disrespect for other traditions actually violated Christianity’s own teachings of “doing unto others what we would have them do unto us.”

But the struggle against disrespect of non-Christian traditions and people has been on-going and unevenly applied. Human beings have the tendency to want to think their own way is superior to others. So Americans will probably always have this problem.

But this is not a “war” against Christmas. It is the attempt of Christians to live respectfully with their neighbors.

There is at least one neat thing about Christmas as we celebrate it with all its secular commercialism and saturation of our life during the fall and early winter. No matter who fusses, big name radio or TV or political person, he or she is pretty much drowned out in the joy and excitement the color and light bring during these long nights and often dreary days.