Whatever Happened to Christmas?

 

If you had asked me, when I was a child, what my favourite time of year was, "Christmas" would be the unequivocal answer.  The name itself was imbued with magic.  They very thought of Christmas would have me and my sibs literally jumping for joy.  

It would have been absolutely inconceivable to me at that time that society would one day virtually banish the very name of this most beloved holiday from the public square.  

But fifty years later, this is exactly where we are.

Before I launch this rant...and it'll be a doozy, trust me...this isn't coming from a place of religiosity.  As most everyone who knows me knows, I'm an avowed, even hardcore atheist.  So it's not a lamentation about a "War on Christmas" from a religious perspective because indeed, much of Christmas is secular, even pagan in nature.  The other thing is that this is not a trivial issue.  It's emblematic of a larger problem...of a western world so driven by guilt over past transgressions, that it is engaging in a self-immolation of all that we are, in a fit of performative virtue that apparently will atone for sins past.  The road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions. 

So what are we left with?  Watch any ad, look through any flyer, walk through the stores...save for a tiny minority of hold-out retailers, the word "Christmas" is virtually gone.  It's been replaced, by the generic, unmagical, functional, but most importantly...inoffensive term "Holiday".

We have Holiday parties, Holiday Lights, Holiday Trees, Holiday Movies, Holiday Sales.  Wow.  Stop the magic already, I'm gonna puke.  

 

The insincerity of these new terms is obvious because people don't speak in generics like this. I don't 'Holiday shop' in the same way that I don't refer to my travels to Paris as a trip to a "foreign capital".  How ridiculous would our world be if someone felt obligated to refer to their Menorah as a "Holiday Candle Holder"? 

I'm not sure who declared that calling things by their actual names was offensive.  Obviously it's been done in a bid to be 'inclusive'.  But when you stamp out one entire culture, you in fact become LESS multi-cultural by a count of one.  That's a thought that surely would have escaped the hand-wringing, patronizing cultural saviours at City Hall as they watched the Christmas trees and wreaths exit the lobby to the dumpster bin.  

And I'll guarantee it's not new citizens to western nations that are asking for this cultural supression.  If I were to find myself suddenly transported to India, I would fully embrace being drawn into and surrounded by Dwali celebrations.  And even if I didn't want to partake myself, the last very last thing I'd do is insist the name Dwali be erased from my sight (possible replacement name: Light Festival Time).  No, this to my mind is a creation of the usual suspects...the social engineers who, filled with the racism of low expectations,  have pretentiously appointed themselves protectors of the sensibilities of the newbies.  

I save a particular contempt though, for the retailers.  The word Christmas has been expunged from all but a few of their ads...this from the businesses that routinely count on their fiscal year being saved 11th hour by the very "holiday that shall remain nameless".  If you profit so obscenely from it, at least have the fortitude to name it. 

I know there's other holidays at this time of year, but none of them come close to the scale and societal impact of Christmas.  I've leafed through flyers with page after page of exclusively Christmas items, yet not seen one actual reference to "Christmas".  And weirdly, all the "Holiday" blather seems to brew up in mid-November and come to a halt shortly after December 25th, an exact mirror of the Christmas time frame.  Odd, that.  

Before I get the inevitable refrain of "Oh Dave, it's not that big a deal...people still know it's Christmas", let me close by re-litigating why I think this matters.  When cultures don't protect themselves, don't cherish and hold onto their sacred traditions, then important things fade away.  Christmas matters (mattered?) so much to us, that it was the only day on the calendar when virtually everything came to a halt in order for us to appreciate one another and share some peace and love. 

I once read a story of a man who was fighting a losing battle to have the river near his town, long polluted, restored to its original pristine state.  When he was a boy he used to swim in that river.  It was this memory that motivated him on his mission.  His biggest concern...that the subsequent generations who never had the privilege to swim there and had never known those joys would also never understand why a clean river was so important to fight for.

I hope one day my grandkids will be surrounded by as much Christmas (and indeed whatever other holidays new Canadians bring to our shores) as I loved and cherished as a child.  

And so hopefully I wish a Merry Christmas to one and all!