For various reasons, religious, economic, personal, some people just do not do Christmas - shock, horror, absolute blasphemy!!! Not that the naysayer can escape from Christmas, the concept and associated musical and visual baggage being shoved down their throats whether people want it or not from pretty much the last week in November (immediately post Thanksgiving in the US of A) through Christmas Day. That's roughly 1/12th of your year when all things Christmas, Christmas and more Christmas is pounded into you. Christmas probably gets more exposure or saturation coverage than a lead-up to a federal election. At least department stores, shopping malls and supermarkets don't broadcast political candidate's speeches while they're on their political hustings. No such respite do these retail establishments give you regarding Christmas. Music, displays, and zillions of ads suggesting this or that perfect gift is the order of the month, and of course all those retail store Santa's are just egging on the kiddies to pester their all and sundry family and friends with "I want, I want, I want, gimme, gimme, gimme" with produce from their store of course. Maybe that's why there's finally an anti-Christmas backlash underway - enough is now enough! It's called the "War on Christmas".
There's been a lot of huffing-and-puffing, especially in the US of A over a so-called "War on Christmas", summed up I guess by replacing "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays" and other wise downplaying the religious and traditional significance of the, ho, ho, ho, Christmas. For example, no Nativity displays in public areas. Actually that might be working since this year (2012) the annual Nativity display in my local shopping centre has been conspicuous by its absence. I miss it not one bit since it has all the same degree of historical reality of Santa himself. [Actually, the day after I wrote that bit of wishful thinking it showed up - curses, foiled again.]
Personally, I'd be more than happy to have the entirety of Christmas and all of the associated baggage, mainly economic, tossed out the window, preferably a high-rise window. Since that's not going to happen, I'll settle for the downgrading. Of course the Christian Right Wing are spouting hellfire and brimstone over this trend, though that's really irrelevant since Christmas has bugger-all to do with Christianity or anything related to monotheism - more on that shortly.
For better or worse, most of the advanced countries in the world today, especially those in North America (United States & Canada), Europe, and the Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand) are no longer WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) societies, but multicultural societies. That means, cultures that have significant populations that don't share the WASP culture, including WASP religions and holidays. "Merry Christmas" has little if any significance; "Happy Holidays" probably has more significance to a broader audience than just WASPs.
One example of personal note, I don't know about your neck of the woods, but where I live, it is near mandatory for supermarkets, department stores, shopping malls, etc. to pipe in and bombard customers with so-called Christmas music. Much of it is just Northern Hemisphere wintertime music like "Frosty the Snowman", "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let it Snow", and "Sleigh Ride" (vastly inappropriate in the Southern Hemisphere celebrating high summer where I am, but that's another issue); some have no religious significance like "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" or "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town". But you get the religiously themes songs too, like "The First Noel", "Silent Night" or "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". It's with the latter I take objection.
The question is, is it the place of supermarkets, etc. to seemingly endorse a particular brand of [monotheistic Christian] religion by playing these religiously themed Christmas Carols? It's perfectly legal of course, but is it ethical? I mean these stores don't pipe in music appropriate to the beliefs of Hindus or those of the Buddhist faith. In a multicultural society, I would strongly suggest that department stores, etc. stick to subjecting their customers to non-religious Christmas, or even better winter holiday, songs, and not ram down a specific monotheistic religious point of view to anyone within earshot. I mean this is not voluntarily attending a concert. People have to shop for necessities, like food. Should part of that experience be the involuntary scenario or experience of listening to music you'd rather not be subjected to? Opting to shop elsewhere probably results in no letup since nearly 100% of stores participate in the unrelenting bombardment. Apart from the unwilling shoppers, pity the poor staffers who have to put up with it for eight hours straight, day-in and day-out for the roughly month long duration. As one such staffer told me, they just tune out as best they can and sort of go into zombie mode for the duration.
The other issue is does Christmas really have any religious connection worthy of its salt at all? The answer is clearly no. You will not find, in any religious text, including the Bible (any version of the Bible in any language) the date, month, or even season when an alleged entity we call Jesus, was born. In short, if you celebrate the 25th of December as the birthday of Jesus, you have only a 1 in 365.25 chance of being correct. So, why was that date chosen?
Well once upon a time, in days of yore, when pagans ruled, it was usual for ancient and in the main rural societies dependent on farming to divide the year into twelve months of thirty days each. Of course that left a remainder of five days, which had to be used up or accounted for, or else the calendar would eventually get seriously out of sync. Now recall that all of this tradition started from and evolved in the Northern Hemisphere. Now what was THE most important thing to these agricultural communities? The Winter Solstice (the shortest daylight day of the year being 21 December) and confirmation that the day's daylight started getting longer immediately afterwards (the gods were therefore pleased) and that meant that although it might be a while, spring was returning, with that a promise of planting and another harvest and therefore food on the table. And so you used up that surplus five days in a post 21 December celebration that winter would eventually wan and good times would return.
Enter Christianity and their hatred for all things pagan and polytheistic. The easiest way to deal with this annual pagan festive season was not to fight city hall but to assimilate it and use it for their own purposes. Easy, just give the masses another reason to celebrate roughly five days post Winter Solstice - the birth of Jesus was a convenient substitute since no one could prove any different. And slowly but surely as Christianity replaced paganism and rural communities morphed more into urban societies and one realised that lengthening daylight was the norm of nature and not subject to the whim of the gods, well, there you have it, the evolution of Christmas. But Christmas is celebrated under false pretences. It was equally false when the reason was the whim of the god's bestowed favour and promised another spring, but then those ancient rural farmers didn't know any better. We know better for both reasons - Mother Nature rules the hours of daylight and the odds are overwhelming that the birth of Jesus didn't take place when the Christian Church says it did. But please don't take my word for it, just ask your local religious clergy or priest or whoever to prove that Christmas Day has any Christian religious significance; they can't, and it doesn't.
Let's be brutally honest about Christmas. It has nothing to do with monotheism, Christianity or Jesus, and everything to do with consumerism and the economy. All the month long hype, all the ads, all the displays, all the music, all the Santa's, all the ho, ho, ho you receive, etc. are designed to get you, as one staffer put it to me, in the proper Christmas mood, which, basically means psychologically getting you to loosening the purse strings and maxing out your credit cards in keeping with all that Christmas spirit, and spirits. Fortunately, more and more people are waking up to this annual manipulation and perhaps are coming around to the point of view that they would just rather have a non-religious "Happy Holiday" without being made to feel guilty that they aren't having a "Merry Christmas" a concept shoved down your throat by society at large.
Conclusion: Christmas is as phoney as a $7 bill and therefore the "War on Christmas" is not only just and logical, but way, way, way overdue.
Happy holidays all!
Science librarian; retired.
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