Christmas wars? Try peace

Some folks in Orangevale, Calif., want to save “Merry Christmas.” They find it “thoughtless, condescending and hurtful” when “non-celebratory phases” [sic] such as “Seasons Greetings” and “Happy Holidays” are substituted in retail advertising for the familiar Old English greeting.

They want “to preserve the culture and tradition of the vast majority of Americans that celebrate and honor Christmas.” And this year, according to a note on their website, www.savemerrychristmas.org, most of all they want Sears to “reintroduce promoting Christmas in their advertising.” Oh, by golly, what more could you want for Christmas?

I’ve been watching this year’s so-called Christmas War with no little bemusement.

The Save Merry Christmas people; the American Family Association; Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, with his Christmas Under Siege; Jerry Falwell with his Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign; and others who have likewise saddled up their war stallions are charging forth with a battle cry that sounds like “Commercialize Christmas, or else!”

Meanwhile, Christianity Today reports that mega-churches such as the Chicago-area Willow Creek Community Church; Mars Hill Bible Church near Grand Rapids, Mich.; and Dallas’ Fellowship Church are taking the church out of Christmas -- or are they taking Christmas out of the church?

Since Christmas is on Sunday this year, you see, these churches have decided not to hold Christmas services. You figure it out; I can’t.

Take Sunday, also known among Christians as the Lord’s Day, a day when Christians (except for Sabbatarians, Messianic Jews and possibly a few others) typically go to church. Take Christmas, a day when not only Christians but also many non-Christians show up in church. Put them together and I guess they cancel each other out.

In the Christianity Today article, Fuller Theological Seminary theologian Robert K. Johnston is quoted as saying, “What’s going on here is a redefinition of Christmas as a time of family celebration rather than as a time of the community faithful celebrating the birth of the Savior. There is a risk that we will lose one more of our Christian rituals, one that’s at the heart of our faith.”

While some Christian communities are redefining Christmas, its would-be defenders are sometimes rewriting its history. The Save Merry Christmas website states, “Christmas is a nationally declared federal holiday that has been observed from the inception of our nation.”

A federal holiday it is, but it didn’t become one until June 26, 1870. Many Christians don’t know that Christmas was not on the Christian calendar until several centuries after Christ’s death. And even then it was hardly celebrated as it is today, with Christmas trees, gifting and parties. It was not even know as Christmas, a word derived from the Old English Cristes Maesse, the Mass of Christ, which is first found in Christian writings in 1038.

Partly because of its associations with Catholicism and the Church of England, and partly because of its bacchanal celebrations, the Puritans who immigrated to Massachusetts banned the keeping of Christmas.

In 1687, the Rev. Increase Mather wrote, “The generality of Christmas-keepers observe that festival after such a manner as is highly dishonourable to the name of Christ. How few are there comparatively that spend those holidays (as they are called) after an holy manner. But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in mad Mirth ....”

I wonder if he’d think much better of the way we keep Christmas these days.

When I asked Jon Turner, a Buddhist I recently interviewed for another column, what he thought about the Christmas War hullabaloo, he said he thought the controversy over which holiday greeting should be used “misses the religious depth of Christmas itself.” As to whether he minds being wished a “Merry Christmas,” that depends on the spirit in which it is said.

“This greeting from a Christian is a most heartfelt expression of the season and captures the feeling behind Christmas and should be received as such. I am always touched when someone says this to me in an authentic way,” he said.

“When people say it without meaning then it becomes just another platitude like when the stewardess says, ‘Have a nice day’ when you get off the airplane.”

Sukh Chugh, born in Chandigarh, Punjab, India, and Sikh by faith, doesn’t mind being greeted with either “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas.” But in an e-mail, he wrote to me: “I read on a website that Christ lived very simply; now we celebrate his birthday through over-consumption and shopping.” He suggested I check out the website for a national initiative started by Canadian Mennonites, www.buynothingchristmas.org.

The site offers visitors who care to take up the initiative a free “Buy Nothing for Christmas Kit,” which can be downloaded. Among the kit’s contents are 27 ideas for alternative gifts (give away a valued possession, collect quotes that make you think of someone), a “further reading” list and a three-part study guide for taking a closer look at the meaning of Christmas.

Unlike SaveMerryChristmas.org, which suggests you send them a $10 or $20 donation, BuyNothingChristmas.org asks only for your feedback and suggestions. The website is a gift in itself; you can get the “Buy Nothing At All” song, ready-to-print coupons so you can “give love this Christmas,” or “Geez,” an ad-free magazine of “holy mischief” and lots more.

This year, one of four within a 100-year span when Christmas Day and the first night of Hanukkah overlap, Christmas -- with Hanukkah -- has found itself another controversy: Chrismukkah, the merging of Christmas and Hanukkah by some Jewish-Christian interfaith families. And, yes, Chrismukkah, too, has a website. At www.chrismukkah.com, you’ll find lots of things -- Chrismukkah cards, the Chrismukkah Merry Mish Mash Holiday Cookbook -- for sale.

But if you’d rather celebrate a traditional Hanukkah, you can join Huntington Beach’s Congregation Adat Israel at 7 p.m. Sunday night at the Bella Terra Amphitheater or Monday night at the Westminster Mall for the lighting of the menorah. On Monday night the Hebrew Academy Choir will sing and gifts will be distributed to children.

The holiday, says the congregation’s Rabbi Aron David Berkowitz, director of Chabad of West Orange County, “contains a universal message that good will be victorious over evil, freedom over oppression and light over darkness.”

That has something in common with what the New Testament tells us a heavenly host sang at the birth of Jesus, “Glory be to God in the highest and on earth, peace to men of good will.”

Happy Hanukkah. Merry Christmas.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].

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