Happy Holidays!

What's going on with the War on Christmas this year, anyway? What I mean is - this whole "Happy Holidays" versus "Merry Christmas" thing. Or, "Happy Hannukah", for that matter - saw that one on Fox last night while channel surfing... I guess Fox has decided not to be bullied by the more bigoted of their viewers. Which is what this is about, after all. How did we let being polite get highjacked by the right and turned into an insult - how did trying to make sure you didn't offend someone turn into "PC", and how did forcing your beliefs down other people's throats turn into a cherished right? And why on earth did how someone wishes you be happy turn into such an earthshattering event, anyhow?

There are two ways to approach that greeting thing, after all: you say what you think they want to hear, or you say what you want to hear. So if someone says "Merry Christmas", they're probably a Christian - or think you are. Can it be an insult? I would think it can: if you're, say, wearing a yarmulke or hijab or pagan symbol, then an in-your-face "Merry Christmas" is pretty clearly an insult. But if someone says "Happy Holidays". is it possible to interpret it as an insult? Christmas is a holiday, isn't it? So how can "Happy Holidays" be an insult? Only, I would argue, if your Christianity is not just the dominant part of you, but the only part of you - so that your inability to assert it at any moment threatens your existence. And even then, surely, you can just flippin' respond "Merry Christmas", can't you? (In that sneering aggressive tone of voice that turns your response into an insult in itself, of course - such a good advertisement, likely to bring people to church in droves... but I digress.) Seriously, how can "Happy Holidays" be an insult? It's not as though there's a secret message encoded in it - Happy holidays except for Christmas which I hope sucks! mwahahahaha.... Instead, it's a wish that doesn't presume - doesn't insist that you are like me, that what I celebrate is the only thing to celebrate. It's "I hope you're happy."

How is that bad?

Here, let me note that I know some atheists hate the word "holiday" - it means "holy day", after all, doesn't it? Well, no.

It derives from "holy day", but claiming that that's what it means now is the fallacious argument from etymology, insisting that word meanings don't change and that whatever the earliest meaning of a word was is somehow the "real" meaning. That's not how languages work. A holiday nowadays isn't a holy day, it's a day off - in British English it's a synonym for "vacation". The Fourth of July isn't holy, nor is President's Day, and when Death took a holiday church had nothing to do with it. If I tell someone I'm taking a holiday from something, I could as easily say vacation, day off, or even that I'm playing hookey. Holidays aren't holy, no matter how many people insist they are. (If they were, no one would have to insist on it.)

And while we're on the topic, what are those "holidays", anyhow? There's Christmas, of course, and New Year's Day (We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year); there's Hanukkah (we start back at Thanksgiving); there's Diwali and Kwanzaa, and sometimes there's Eid. There's the solstice and Saturnalia and Festivus. It's the middle of winter - people will celebrate it when the days begin to grow longer again. But mainly, in this country, it's Christmas and New Year's - those are the federal holidays, the days off work (for lots of us, and even those who have to work them get something, a different day or extra money). That's why it's "Happy Holidays" in the plural.

That said, I'll say "Merry Christmas" to people who say it to me. I won't bristle up and tell them what they can do with it, even if they're obnoxious. (If they're obnoxious, I'll respond with "Good Yule!" or, once I admit it, "Happy Solstice!") But I don't mind saying "Merry Christmas. I keep Christmas - I love the whole holiday. But what is it that we freethinkers mean by "Christmas"? If even Richard Dawkins keeps Christmas, what is it?

First - it's not a new question. Did you know that in the entire length of Dickens' A Christmas Carol there is not one mention of Jesus? This is the closest:

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"

All the references to God are in the form of "God bless us" or "Oh God!". True, there are some references to life after death, but no mention of God is there: Jacob Marley uses the passive in his famous line

"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"

Who dooms them? He doesn't say... And the Ghost of Christmas Present charges Scrooge with "Heaven":

"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! To hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust."

But all of these are Earth-centered - Christmas is perceived of as a time when men should do good to other men.

Scrooge's nephew says this to him:

But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

And at "the end of it" Dickens describes Scrooge thus:

He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world... and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!

So what's my point? Just this: There are two holidays in the Western world, both of them falling on December 25th and both of them now called Christmas. There's the Christian festival, the Feast of the Nativity - the one with the creche and Baby Jesus and sacred songs; and there's the other one, the secular Yule - the holiday with the tree and the presents and Santa Claus, the holiday Irving Berlin wrote secular songs for. The holiday with holly and turkey and trimmings, the one with snow and tinsel and old fashioned Father Christmases, the lights and ornaments and reindeer... Most people in this country may keep them both, but precious few keep only The Nativity. Many more than that keep Yule...

Last night we drove around looking at Christmas lights. There were several dozens of houses where not one scrap of Jesus could be seen in the lights, and three where there were: one that had a "Jesus is the reason for the season" sign above Santa, one that had a cross inside the outline of a tree, and one that had only a nativity scene. Only one house that had no trace of Yule, two that mixed, and all the rest were Yule alone.

There is certainly a religious component to Christmas - but which religion? Christmas as it is practiced in the US at least, and I expect around the European-origin world at large, isn't really about Baby Jesus® anymore.

So I celebrate - and say "Merry Christmas".

But now, to all my readers:

Season's Greetings - and Happy New Year!

Whatever you want those words to mean.

Rejoice with the return of the Sun and the lengthening of days. Be well, be happy, be kind to one another. This is our life: live it well together.

Happy Holidays.