By: Jim Taylor

When did Christmas become unspeakable?


The bags from the grocery store proclaim “Season’s Greetings.” Most of the cards arriving in our mailbox say “Happy Holidays” or some equally bland equivalent. The seasonal songs on the radio and in the malls tell about winter and sleighbells and chestnuts roasting on open fires – most of which have more to do with Currier & Ives etchings than with contemporary life – but only rarely about the birth of a baby boy some 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem.

        When did Christmas become unspeakable?

        A few years ago, Toronto erected a 50-foot lavishly lighted tree outside its City Hall. But they didn’t call it a Christmas tree. They called it a “Holiday tree.”

        A chorus of derision greeted the decision. Much of it came from non-Christian groups. Bernie Farber, the executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, called it “over-the-top political correctness.”

        “To slap a generic term on a symbol that has significance to only one religion does not make it multicultural,” said Anita Bromberg of B’nai Brith. “That’s not being inclusive… You should call it what it is.”


Two-edged swords

 Let me be clear – I do not support the kind of cultural arrogance that expects everyone to conform to the social norms of a majority. Or even of a minority.

        In his famous essay On Liberty, 150 years ago, philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, “If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

        Translated into modern terms, Mill’s wisdom asserts that minorities have rights. A majority must not force a minority to conform. Christians must not require Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, and Wiccans to celebrate Christmas. Or Easter, for that matter.

        Although I notice that the Buddhist nunnery up the road has hung up Christmas decorations anyway.

        But conversely, no other group – be they pagans, militant atheists, or single-minded advocates of political correctness – has the right to excise “Christmas” from our cultural vocabulary.

        Even majorities have rights.

        Besides, I’m not sure that Christians are a majority any more. An oft-quoted statistic claims that Canada now has more Moslems than Presbyterians. Sociologist Reg Bibby of the University of Lethbridge has spent 40 years documenting declines in church attendance.



Christmas, uncensored

Alex McGilvery, an e-mail correspondent in Ontario, commented, “Many people have lectured me about saying ‘Merry Christmas’ because it might offend someone… Strangely I have never been lectured by Moslem, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Baha’i, or pagan – just by post-Christian humanists who have appointed themselves the arbiters of political correctness.”

        Perhaps members of the minority faiths realize that they cannot expect the freedom to celebrate Ramadan or Diwali, Hanukkah or Naw Ruz, if they lobby against Christians enjoying the same freedom.

        Besides, I have yet to meet anyone who refuses a statutory holiday.

        Provided the rights of the majority do not infringe the liberties of the minority, no minority group – including self-appointed language police – should be censoring the terms suitable for celebrating Christmas.

        I respect the stand of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who choose not to celebrate Christmas because the timing of December 25^th3”> has its roots in a pagan Roman festival, Saturnalia. Historically, they teach, the birth of Jesus was more likely to have occurred in spring or fall than in the cold of winter. The shepherds, you may remember, were “in the fields, watching their sheep…”

        Rightly or wrongly, though, December 25^th3”> has become the day we celebrate the birth of a child revered around the world as the human embodiment of God’s personality.

        And we should pretend that’s not the reason for the season? Get real!



Christian nation?

My friend and fellow journalist Lloyd Mackey writes a political analysis column out of Ottawa. Earlier this year, he mused about Stephen Harper’s declaration of Quebec as a “nation.”

        Challenged to define this nation, Harper replied, “They know who they are.”

        They don’t all live in Quebec, Mackey noted. “There are members of Les Quebecois culture in many parts of Canada: Acadian New Brunswick; St. Boniface and Beausejour in Manitoba; southwestern Saskatchewan; and in the eastern suburbs of Vancouver in Mallardville, a village now absorbed by the city of Coquitlam. All these might describe themselves as ‘the diaspora’ – as do Jewish people who have settled in Montreal and New York rather than Tel Aviv, or Chinese or Mennonite people who are not in China or Russia.”

        Nation, in other words, is not a legal identity. It’s a cultural identity. It is defined by language, by history, by belief systems…

        Which means, Mackey continued, that a Christian “nation” can also exist within Canada. It “resides in the hearts of people who are Christian – no matter what their size, shape, or location.”

        Christmas and Easter are the two major festivals of the Christian nation – just as much as St. Jean Baptiste Day is for the nation of Quebecois.

        Multiculturalism does not consist of processing individual differences through a blender and producing baby food. It means, rather, celebrating each tradition’s uniqueness.

        When theology professor Harvey Cox set out on a year of interfaith encounters, he went prepared with a multitude of platitudes suitable for soothing religious differences. To his astonishment, he wrote in Many Mansions, the people he met didn’t want vague value statements. They wanted to hear about Jesus.

        Jesus – later called The Christ – is the core of Christmas. Removing Christmas from the Christmas season leaves only a vacuum, a vacuity, an empty space that demands filling with meaningless spending.

        So if you want to celebrate some kind of neutered midwinter Holiday at this time, go ahead.

        As for me, I shall – almost as an act of defiance against the dumbing down of a historic tradition that shaped a civilization – wish you “Merry Christmas!”

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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