Sunday marks Advent 1. It's the Christian church's New Year's Day, and the day I consent to turn on our Christmas lights and start listening to Christmas music. Scroogish as that may be, 5 weeks of Jingle Bells is quite enough, thank you very much, and I really don't want to feel like screaming by the time December 25th actually rolls around and the Little Drummer Boy comes into my hearing for the 400th time. So I've put limits on the duration of the holiday season. Christmas needs to be smaller.
Last year a number of my Facebook acquaintances (and at least one family member) made a big show of the fact they were going to use the phrase "Merry Christmas" as opposed to, I suppose, "Happy Holidays" or perhaps "Go to Hell" (they weren't always clear). I think they were signing on in spirited defense of Christmas. And good for them! From a Christian perspective I think Christmas needs some defending. Maybe they're a bit late —because it seems the war has already been mostly won by the bad guys— but better late than never, and Christians should relish a lost cause!
The problem is this victory over Christmas hasn't been won by a few well-meaning school boards or other public institutions making the holiday smaller, it's been won by large corporations —that big eastern syndicate as Lucy says so memorably in A Charlie Brown Christmas— making it bigger. Whatever Christmas is today, it sure isn't a religious holiday, unless perhaps you're a member of the Church of Mindless Over-Consumption and Enforced Jollity. Christmas has become something so pervasive, so all-encompassing & enormous that it can't be restrained or limited by some puny public agency deciding to call things by names like Winter Festival Concert, or Holiday Tree. The "season" swallows about 15% of the year! Who knows how much of our disposable income is burned along with the yule log? Obviously it's enough to turn loss-making retailers profitable!
These earnest Christian acquaintances of mine aren't fighting the right fight. Or more accurately they're on the wrong side. In trying to get everyone to join them in saying "Merry Christmas" to all-and-sundry, far from defending the holiday, they're actually participating in this enlarging of the season. Dragooning non-Christians into saying "Merry Christmas" (or harassing them by saying it) isn't going to make the country more Christian. It's going to make non-Christian people resentful and additionally siphon away whatever religious meaning remains in the holiday (surely must be sucking air by now). Those who aren't already committed Christians will drain the word "Christmas" of its original connotations, increasing the space for that eastern syndicate to define the season in its profit-making interest.
Peace on earth, goodwill towards all? Yes, please! But why not save the rest of it for church, where it'll be understood and appreciated more!
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