Once upon a time, Christians wanted everyone to celebrate their holiday.
They wanted children to get excited about it, so they allowed the myth of Santa Claus to be created and perpetuated, and nobody seemed to mind if a few non-Christian children got presents from him at Christmas.
They wanted to have the day off – they wanted the whole nation to have the day off – so Christmas became a Federal Holiday. They didn’t mind that it had to be turned into a secular holiday for that to happen, and they didn’t mind that non-Christians got the day off, too.
They wanted Christmas music to fill the air everywhere. They wanted schoolchildren to sing songs of Christmas in school, even if they weren’t Christian children. When music for other holidays, or for secular Christmas celebrations had to be included, they didn’t mind. As long as the children sang Christmas songs, it was OK.
They wanted Christmas to be a big, big deal. When glossy Christmas sale ads started coming out earlier and earlier, they didn’t complain. When Christmas music started being played in stores and shopping centers two months before the holiday, it was welcomed, because it got people in the spirit. When TV and movies and books and magazines told the world that Christmas was a season for giving, a season of generosity that filled all the people of the world regardless of their religion, their voices did not rise up in protest.
They wanted to share their holiday with everyone, so they allowed whatever compromises were necessary in order to do so. It went from being a minor holiday, a distant second from Easter, celebrated with their families and church congregations, to a mass-marketed, materialistic, completely secular festival of excess with their full approval and encouragement.
But now that it has become a holiday that excites children, that frees workers all around the country for at least a day, that is sung about in public places, that is celebrated most of all by retailers, now, only after this, is there a protest.
“Keep Christ in Christmas,” they say. But how? They are not asking the nation’s parents to tell their children the truth about Santa Claus. They are not asking December 25th to be removed from the list of Federal Holidays. They are not asking for Hymns and Carols to be removed from the musical repertoires of non-Christian musicians. They’re shopping for toys and decorating their homes with pagan icons just like the nonreligious. If they themselves aren’t doing anything to return to the religious celebration of Christmas, how can they expect anyone else? And how can they now expect an entire nation – no, many nations worldwide – to stop decorating trees, to stop telling children that Santa filled their stockings overnight, to turn off the radio so they don’t hear “The First Noel” or “We Three Kings of Orient Are”, to stop buying presents or traveling to see family or even serving dinner in soup kitchens? Is “Keep Christ in Christmas” an ultimatum? Celebrate it our way or don’t celebrate it at all? Yet, for all the protests against the secular holiday Christmas has become, none of the War on Christmas militia seem to be leading by example, by celebrating Christmas without any of the non-Christian trappings that their predecessors so blithely allowed.
Christ cannot be inserted into a holiday that has had more than a hundred years of concerted effort put into its secularization. It is immoral and wrong to create a tradition, expand it so that it crosses cultural boundaries, intertwine it with an entire season of the year, and then turn around and insist that everyone must suddenly adopt the religion that is now only loosely associated with it. The damage is done, so to speak. Religious people are welcome to their own traditions, are allowed to share their rituals and celebrations exclusively among their own, and can make whatever changes to their own significant events that they want. At this point, though, the secular Christmas belongs to everyone. They gave it to us willingly. You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game, and you can’t take this ball and go home anymore.