Again we find ourselves at the middle of one of the biggest explosions of political correctness of the year. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwanza, Joyous Boxing Day, Merry Festivus (turns out Seinfeld didn’t invent it), Joyous Yule and Happy-Whatever-Day-in-December-You-Choose-to-Celebrate. Oh, and Merry Christmas.
A lot of people get really emotional about the religious context of saying “Merry Christmas”, as if to do so it delegitimizes the other holidays of the month. But just how religious is Christmas? What is it about LEDs and plastic trees and gift giving that has a deep holy significance?
It was Ulysses S. Grant who, June 28, 1870, declared Christmas to be a national holiday. This was after a bill declaring it so rose through the political process and was signed into law. The law declares that the twenty-fifth day of December, “commonly called Christmas Day”, will become holiday along with Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July and New Years Day. And when that happened, there was something rather extraordinary that took place; a second Christmas was created.
One of the objections to the public endorsement of Christmas is that it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment which prohibits the Congress from specially recognizing any particular religion. But we did establish a national holiday on 25 December. What does this mean?
It isn’t unheard of for a national holiday to coincide with a religious holiday, including in 2010 the existence of Earth Day and Good Friday on the same day and Yom Kippur and Constitution Day, to say nothing of the fact that in 2011 Christmas happens to be the fifth night of Hanukah. So it is entirely possible that there was a second, secular, Christmas founded in 1870 as a national holiday.
Granted this seems like something of a stretch, but keep in mind the two faces of Christmas – the first, a high holy day for Christianity with worshippers gathering at midnight to celebrate the solstice and commemorate a significant anniversary in the faith, singing songs like Silent Night and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. The second, the holiday harkening back to Yule with evergreen trees and lights, a celebration of togetherness and banishing the dark and cold of winter, the Christmas of Santa and shameless, unhampered capitalism; a holiday with songs like Sleigh Ride and All I Want for Christmas is You.
In our understanding of the holiday, Sacred Christmas and Santa Christmas are so separated that people of many faiths or the lack thereof, often continue to celebrate the latter while avoiding the former. While many of those with a deep belief in the former worry about the latter distracting from the meaning of the holiday.
In light of this, I propose the following: let’s all decorate our houses and get trees. Let’s not get all bothersome about “Merry Christmas” versus “Happy Holidays”. Santa can be for everyone, President Grant even said so.
Editor: Samantha Sandler