Happy holidays!
I really mean it, to everyone reading this. My season's greeting is not a political statement, and in the spirit of the season, it shouldn't be. And yet… too many people, from the supernaturally divisive president on down, insist that it be so. As soon as Thanksgiving is over, the culture war of words begins.
A friend, who was shopping for his family's Christmas dinner, was leaving a Washington-area grocery store when he saw a man walking past a Salvation Army bell ringer wishing shoppers a “Merry Christmas.” The man got to his truck, then turned around and returned to the woman.
“Since you said 'Merry Christmas' and not 'Happy Holidays,' I'll give you money,” he told her, adding, “America is back!”
A small victory in the counteroffensive against the supposed Christmas war! I hope the man's donation was in line with the big point he apparently wanted to make, but I doubt it was. because that would be a lot of money.
If people like him really wanted everyone to have a merry Christmas, they would stop culturally fighting over a non-existent war on Christmas.
Until I was 18, every December I exclusively said “Merry Christmas.” But almost everyone I knew in my working-class world was Catholic: relatives, classmates at the local Catholic school, and most of our neighbors in the homes of our community. Several Protestants lived on the block, but in the house next door there was only one Jewish family. I envied the four children in that family on the holidays because they celebrated Hanukkah. and Christmas gifts (one parent was raised Christian). I lamented that they couldn't enjoy the other traditions of a religious Christmas—the centuries-old hymns, the grand manger, a sanctuary filled with flowers, garlands, and candles, the wafting incense—but I knew they had their own cherished rituals throughout the year.
The priests and nuns so prominent in my childhood endured the commercialization of Christmas, but still fought back. He annually participated in a contest sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men's group, that asked students from parochial elementary schools across the city to design a poster with the theme “Keep Christ in Christmas.” I never got good news that I had won.
And then when I went to college in a big city, I suddenly had Jewish friends and non-religious friends, and one who was Muslim. I came to appreciate firsthand the diversity of the country (another term that has become a fighting word in these polarized times). I started saying “Happy Holidays” at Christmas, as a gesture of inclusion and respect for other people of different religions or without faith. I reserved “Merry Christmas” for people and groups I knew or assumed were fellow Christians.
That has been my practice for decades. My career has been in the media, which by definition serves a broad and diverse audience, including people of various religions or none at all. It makes sense that broadcasters, newspapers, news sites and other media outlets, as well as other corporations, would favor an inclusive phrase like “Happy Holidays” or “Season's Greetings.”
Furthermore, given the happy confluence of religious holidays in December, along with New Year's Eve, ecumenical greetings should not be objectionable. It seems quite Christian to me. After all, Jesus Christ was a Jew (and a poor refugee for a while having fled with his family to escape violence in his homeland). I don't think Christ cares if someone says “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” (The root of “holiday” is “holy day.” Just saying.)
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas: These are not political statements. Unless you want them to be.
President Trump wants them to be. He is not the first to exploit the issue for political gain. some to the right I've been doing it my whole life, although claims of a social war at Christmas have only really increased in the last two decades, “thank you” especially to Bill O'Reilly and Fox News and to Republican politicians eager to score points among their evangelical voters. In 2005, President George W. Bush, despite calling himself a born-again Christian, I have many pieces of coal of conservative Christians when he sent cards wishing more than a million followers a happy “holiday season.”
Ten years later, Trump, who rarely approaches the door of a church, took the escalator to the presidency and soon made it clear that he would not make Bush's mistake. Even at summer MAGA rallies, Trump criticizes those who don't say “Merry Christmas.” In 2015, he told grateful rally attendees: “If I become president, we're all going to say 'Merry Christmas' again, I can tell you that.”
He still tells us. Last week, Jimmy Kimmel ran video clips that Trump has done it every year since 2015, including this month. For the pimp-in-chief, it's the gift that keeps on giving. “You weren't allowed to say 'Merry Christmas,'” he said last year. “I got it back.”
Once again Trump claims to have solved a problem that only existed in his mind.
However, for a guy who is so critical of Christmas greetings, Trump's own annual social media posts are about as anti-Christ as you can imagine. What would Jesus do? He wouldn't think of nonsense like the ones Trump published on Christmas 2024 attacking President Obama, “radical left lunatics” and “sleepy Joe Biden” and wishing the people Biden had just pardoned “GO TO HELL!” He had wished the same for Biden on Christmas 2023.
The sentiment behind “Happy Holidays,” much like what most “Merry Christmas” intends, is kind and sincere—a spirit we should all aspire to embrace and extend to strangers during the other 11 months of the year, too.
That's why I feel sorry for the president and for that man at the suburban grocery store who conditioned his contribution to the needy on a bell ringer saying “Merry Christmas.” Their complaints at Christmas suggest something less than cheerful within them. Let the rest of us be happy during the holidays and wish the same to everyone.
Blue sky: @jackiecalmes
Rags: @jkcalmes
UNKNOWN: @jackiekcalmes
