Questioning the War on Christmas
Either you’re with us, or you’re with the pagans
Peter Mathen
For students at the University of Manitoba, the year’s final issue of the Manitoban represents the first of many sinister omens signaling the start of the exhausting holiday season. The start of stressful holiday shopping, the playing of classic Christmas cartoons, and the appearance of relatives who are apparently released from witness protection programs for family dinners can cause people to think they’re trapped in some “Groundhog Day-esque” limbo from year to year. Throw in the familiar stress of exams and the absence of regimented classes, and even a fifth-year student pulling the victory lap can wonder if he’s somehow travelled back to his freshmen year.
In recent years, a new holiday tradition has emerged that has quickly settled into the hearts of millions to the point that December wouldn’t feel right without it. As November comes to a close, I feel that I speak for the huddled masses when I voice just how eagerly I await the only holiday tradition that may possibly bump Charlie Brown as my favourite holiday show — Fox News’ award winning coverage of “The War on Christmas.”
For those who are unaware and somehow ignorant of this December tradition, the War on Christmas is the holiday brainchild of the Catholic League, the American Family Association, and the fair and balanced professionals at the Fox News Network. The skirmish involves the brave battle of the oppressed minority of American Christians against the apparently endless onslaught from the godless secular majority. To be more precise, is it offensive to use the term “holiday” in place of the more traditional term “Christmas,” so as to be more inclusive to non-Christians? Are “they” in fact, trying to take the Christ out of your Christmas? (Where, from what I can figure, “they” refers to the secular big business liberals that run the continent and “your” refers to you, the embattled Christian trying to celebrate the birth of Christ.)
It’s difficult to argue that “holiday” has not taken a major place in some major department stores in their December advertising campaigns. Gap Inc. (which owns Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic) refuses to use the term “Christmas” in their stores, despite repeated criticisms (a fact I painstakingly just researched through Wikipedia.com.) It’s also difficult to argue that, over the past few decades, Christmas hasn’t been secularized and watered-down in a politically correct fashion to the point of absurdity. As a street-hardened youth forced to attend the impoverished Laidlaw School on the wrong side of the (Wilkes. St.) tracks, I often was amused by the annual “Christmas/holiday” concert’s abundance of multicultural presentations to a student population that at the time was made up of 95 per cent white Christians (a statistic that I just painstakingly made up.) On the surface, it may seem like there’s a well planned and executed attack on the religious side of the season.
However, upon more thorough investigation, the proposition of the War on Christmas is absurd. Christians still make up the vast majority of North Americans, and to pretend that they are somehow being persecuted is absurd. While there may very well be an increasing amount of “happy holidays” and “season greetings” heard in December, they will never rival the number of times one hears “Merry Christmas.” Despite this, while Gap Inc. continues to avoid the word Christmas, other large chains such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target all bowed to the criticism and restored the word to its holiday setups.
Even if the season has taken another step in the secular and inclusive direction, I fail to see how this is a bad thing. While a bunch of tiny Caucasian kindergartners singing Kwanzaa songs may have been absurd, it was always nonetheless enjoyable. The ridiculousness and enthusiasm of a bunch of white Christians celebrating whatever it is exactly Kwanzaa celebrates was always one of my favourite parts of the concert, right up there with the one class that did an awkward holiday rap and the kid that just flat-out refused to participate despite being on stage. If for some reason a black person did randomly wander in on Laidlaw’s holiday concert, I’m confident they would feel both included and appreciated. And isn’t this the real point of season? Isn’t the central teaching of Christ one of acceptance? If repeatedly watching the same Christmas cartoon specials has taught me anything, it’s that the holidays are a time to celebrate and cherish those around you regardless of their particular backgrounds or beliefs. That is, of course, unless you’re a reindeer with a red nose, in which case you should then be persecuted and ostracized by the community until you can prove that your freak genetic mutation serves some practical function.
