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Have a Holly, Jolly Holiday
The War Is On
The "war" is composed of conservative Christian groups railing against "politically correct" advertising campaigns that, they say, do not include the words "Merry Christmas" in sales literature or seasonal greetings. Some municipalities and government institutions -- including the U.S. Capitol for many years -- refer to a Christmas tree as a "holiday tree," also drawing flak.
It is an emotional campaign -- a petition against Target for not including "Christmas" in its advertising drew more than 600,000 signatures -- but it is also an easy one. Virtually all of the stores that conservative groups have targeted have quickly changed their advertising to feature "Christmas" more prominently, as have many of the groups that had "holiday trees."
 The former Capitol Holiday Tree is the Capitol Christmas Tree again, at the behest of House Speaker Dennis Hastert. (Haraz N. Ghanbari - AP) |
And despite some high-powered rhetoric -- Fox News host John Gibson says in the subtitle of his book "The War on Christmas" that there is a "liberal plot to ban the sacred Christian holiday" -- neither Gibson, nor anyone at the AFA, the Liberty Counsel, Lynn's group or the ACLU, is aware of an attempt to halt religious observance of Christmas or to stop making it an official federal holiday. And the real irony, religious and academic scholars point out, is that Christmas is observed in one way or another by more Americans than at any point in the nation's history; indeed, more than any nation at any time in history.
Given that, perhaps it's not surprising that substantially more people (52 percent) were worried about the commercialization of Christmas than they were about any opposition to displays of religious symbols in public places (35 percent), according to a new nationwide poll by the Pew Research Center. Some 83 percent of respondents said they preferred "Merry Christmas" to something like "Happy Holidays." But in a follow-up question, a plurality of 45 percent said it really didn't matter much either way.
To Karal Ann Marling, a University of Minnesota professor of popular culture who documented the holiday's evolution in "Merry Christmas! Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday," the campaign is an attempt to whitewash the nation's religious and ethnic mosaic.
"I don't want them to come to my house and poison my dog, but the religious right wants all of American religious life to be permeated by one point of view, and it's just not so," she says.
"Persecution of Christians, at Christmas? In this country? None that I'm aware of," says James P. Byrd Jr., assistant dean of the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. He graces the observation with a gentle laugh, a comforting sound in this suddenly confrontational season.
Instead, Byrd suggests looking at the current fray in a larger context: conservative Christians yearning for what appears to be a simpler time. When Christmas was Christmas, the argument goes.
It might look something like this:
It is about 1950. A good clean snow has fallen. It crunches underfoot as you round the turn into your yard. Darkness is falling. It is not just quiet, it is peaceful. The small lamp in the kitchen window throws a shaft of light onto the snow. Your mother is there, cooking, singing lightly to herself. It will smell like baking, when you walk in, stamping the snow off your boots, throwing off the cold. Presents will be by the tree. Your pop will be in the easy chair, your little sister tramping down the stairs in her angel costume ready to go to the pageant.
Your heart freeze-frames: This is Christmas.
And now you wake up and it's 2005. You go to hear the kid's Christmas play, except by the time it clears all the church-state hurdles the ACLU worries about, it sounds more like "Songs of Many Lands as Sung by 6-Year-Olds." The Christmas Tree at the Capitol in Washington, they call it a "holiday tree" most years now. Even President Bush, a devout Christian, sends out a Christmas card that does not say "Merry Christmas." Now you hear a lot about Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and "the holidays."
