But did that myrrh come with a holiday card or a Christmas card?

This month, as in every December since he took office, President Bush sent out cards with a generic end-of-the-year message, wishing 1.4 million of his close friends and supporters a happy "holiday season."

Many people are thrilled to get a White House Christmas card, no matter what the greeting inside. But some conservative Christians are reacting as if Bush stuck coal in their stockings.

"This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture," said William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

[...]

Religious conservatives are miffed because they have been pressuring stores to advertise Christmas sales rather than "holiday specials" and urging schools to let students out for Christmas vacation rather than for "winter break."

-- " 'Holiday' Cards Ring Hollow for Some on Bush's List," WaPo, Dec 7, 05

Oh, but it gets better ...

That so-called Christian activists are making a big deal out of the commercial trappings of the Christmas season not being sufficiently religious is freaking me out a little.

I would think that the incentive would be to separate the religious celebration of the season -- you know, the four weeks of Advent leading up to the celebratory church services -- from the more commercialized practices.

Maybe that's impossible. After all, the reason Christmas is in December is because the Roman emporer Constantine decided that moving it there was a handy way to appropriate festivals linked to a solar cult and thereby bring more people to Christ by shifting the focus of their celebrations. ("Hundred Dollar Holiday," Christianity Today, Nov 29, 05; "Christmas," the Catholic Encyclopedia). So you've already got a link between merry-making and a big-time religious event.

However, as the Catholic Encylopedia notes on the whole card-and-present industry:

Pagan customs centering round the January calends gravitated to Christmas. Tiele (Yule and Christmas, London, 1899) has collected many interesting examples. The strenæ (eacute;trennes) of the Roman 1 January (bitterly condemned by Tertullian, de Idol., xiv and x, and by Maximus of Turin, Hom. ciii, de Kal. gentil., in P. L., LVII, 492, etc.) survive as Christmas presents, cards, boxes.

So it's not like card- and gift-giving has been an uncontested part of the holiday.

This whole so-called "War on Christmas" business makes me uncomfortable because it implies that Christians are okay with the market commoditization of their beliefs. I've been watching the rising tide of stories about Christian businesses and Christian commerce -- they're part of a bigger story on conscious commerce, I think -- and the willingness to confuse a merchant's inclusion of "Christmas" in their Web site with an endorsement of Christian beliefs is deeply troubling. It's too easy to make an argument like the one in the WaPo story:

"Ninety-six percent of Americans celebrate Christmas," [William] Donohue said. "Spare me the diversity lecture."

Frankly, there's a huge difference between celebrating Christmas in a secular capacity as a holiday centered on fellowship and generosity, and celebrating it as the birth of Christ. Buying your gifts at a store that uses "Christmas" as a marketing tool doesn't make you a good Christian, any more than buying a Buddha makes you a good Buddhist. It really bugs me that nobody who's willing to speak on this issue has said that yet.

Comments

[drunken monkey]

"That so-called Christian activists are making a big deal out of the commercial trappings of the Christmas season not being sufficiently religious is freaking me out a little."

I don't get that either -- they've got the lock on the religious component of the holiday. Why get worked up about what Wal-Mart's doing, when they know what the day means to them?

I think the Bible quote in the President's card made his position on Christianity pretty clear, myself.

[molly]

Strange. You would think christian activists would be more upset about churches not having services on Christmas because it is a Sunday (??).

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1378738

[Deborah]

It always seems to me that a lot of the people denouncing the de-Christmasizing of the holiday season are simply opposed to multiculturalism/religious pluralism, and the market commoditization of their beliefs doesn't irk them nearly so much...if at all. I have to say, I suspect a lot of them of either not caring about that in the slightest or being just fine with it. Of course, I realize there are many sincere and thoughtful Christians who do have a problem with it...but you'd have to convince me they're the majority. We usually hear the most from the fundamentalist windbags, and other voices get lost in the shouting and sputtering.

[Josh]

I got irked about this this nonsense last year; looks like it's going to go on the list of annual annoyances.

I think you hit this one right out of the damn park. And one of the reasons I see no one stepping up on the commercialization issue is the only people getting het up about "The War on Christmas" are the ones caught up in an obessive (and surreal) martyrdom complex when people don't bow and scrape before their particular version of Christianity.

[Roger]

Interesting. I haven't really seen this particular slant to the issue before.

I tend to agree with the "activists" as far as the naming of the holiday goes, though I come at it from a different angle than they. It's Christmas, plain and simple. It's a public holiday, not just in the US but in many other countries as well, and as such is a secular celebration that happens to be known by the name "Christmas." So let's call it that. No one is served by wishing each other a "Happy Non-Denominational Winter Solstice Celebration."

Though I have no problem with people attaching religious significance to the holiday - as long as they don't force such on everyone - I can argue with the "Keep Christ in Christmas" statements. "Christ" wasn't even originally in Christmas. As Lisa ably points out, the whole Christian angle was meant to steal the thunder from pre-existing "pagan" winter solstice celebrations, primarily Saturnalia in Rome and similar Celtic festivals in Europe.

At the same time however, we seem to be forgetting Chanukkah, Kwanzaa, true solstice celebrations, and other holidays that happen around the same time. Calling Christmas Christmas is all well and good, but if we're going to be civilized and inclusive, we need to remember that others celebrate differently. The existance of all of these different holidays is ample reason to celebrate diversity, not to neuter them all into some generic "winter celebration."

[Ellie]

I agree very much with Roger. We should be celebrating all of these diverse events, not pretending they don't exist. Though I can see the point about separating the religious festival from the commercial excess, surely we don't mean all celebration and decoration is commercialism and the religious bit just means solemn religious observances.

The other problem that a lot of people have with "Winterval" and other such delicately non-religious terms, at least here in the UK, is that they are often imposed "to avoid offending people of different religions" without actually having any discussion or consultaiton with those people. Inclusivity and avoidance of offence are good things, but patronising people by assuming they will be offended, without giving them a say in the matter, is not such a good thing.

Here in Britain there are regularly occasions where some well-meaning and populist council decides to ban all reference to Christmas during the holiday season because it's "offensive to other religions", while Muslim, Hindu and other community leaders comment bemusedly "They never asked us, and we wouldn't have been offended".

[piny]

>>Frankly, there's a huge difference between celebrating Christmas in a secular capacity as a holiday centered on fellowship and generosity, and celebrating it as the birth of Christ. Buying your gifts at a store that uses "Christmas" as a marketing tool doesn't make you a good Christian, any more than buying a Buddha makes you a good Buddhist. It really bugs me that nobody who's willing to speak on this issue has said that yet.>>

Good point. There's also the question of whether "Happy Holidays" is comfortable only for businesses wanting to speak to people with a bunch of different cultural/religious backgrounds. My family is a bunch of atheists. We have a tree, but I'd say we definitely celebrate a "holiday," rather than the birth of Christ, and we all say "holiday season," "winter break," and "Happy holidays," to each other.

[Zbu]

With all the problems going on in the world, what is the big deal about Christmas? I'm half tempted just to call it Xmas or Saturnalia just to make these fools look even more foolish. It's a time to celebrate, just leave it at that.

Talk about not knowing the true meaning of the season.