It’s the Holiday Season again. Until recently I’ve had very warm and fuzzy feelings toward Christmas, including all the usual associations of friends and family gathered, good food, gifts, and music. As a very earnest, religious child, I truly believed in a Spirit of Christmas that could surround the world once a year.  I didn’t know anything about non-Christians then, but even when I learned of them, I just knew in my heart that Christmas was a time when you showed generosity and magnanimity toward everyone, and they too would feel cheer joy. I truly believed in the greeting of the angels to the shepherds in the fields, “Peace on Earth, good will to all.” The story of a humble child born in a manger that would save all of humanity for sin, remains compelling even today, but Christmas has definitely lost it’s luster.

In fact, I have come to dread the season. Christmas music invades the malls, radio and television as early as October, so that long before December 25 that it by the time the holiday actually rolls around the music I’ve loved since I was a child starts to seem like the music military units incessantly blast into surrounded compounds in order to get those inside to surrender. The bombardment of advertising that starts even earlier makes me tense about the financial pinch so many of us are in this year. And then there’s the traffic and crowds to content with.  I could go on, but you get my point.  It’s stressful.

There seems to be so little joy and merriment left in the season. In fact there’s an ugliness to it, stoked by rantings about an imagined “War on Christmas” and a siege mentality many people seem to genuinely feel, though I can’t discern any  any credible cause. I’ve already gotten my first Facebook message denouncing the White House for not having a Christmas Tree because they are accused of calling it a “Holiday Tree.” My heart sank when I saw the message. Are we really starting this again? Don’t we have enough to deal with as a country that we don’t need to pile this issue on?

First off, let’s be clear about the veracity of the rumor. It’s essentially the same email/Facebook status message that circulated last year and the year before, just with the dates changed.  It is FALSE! NOT TRUE! It was false in 09.  It was false in 2010, and its false now. President and First Lady Obama had two little girls and will celebrate Christmas in ways that are pretty much like every other Christian, American family, except with a lot of extra security and much less privacy.  Check out the pictures from last year.  They are almost too perfect, just like White House Christmas photos generally have been, ought to be, and probably how you want your family photos to be.

Nor is there a “War on Christmas” and nobody is trying to “Take the Christ out of Christmas”. You literally can’t do either of those things. How do you declare was on an abstraction? And if you take Christ out of Christmas you are left with mas. Merry mas? In this context that, too, is a religious term.

Besides, if there were a war on Christmas, I would have heard about it, maybe even been recruited. Until last month I lived in the heart of lefty liberal New England and I am a dyed in the wool secularist. I am a member of the ACLU and sympathize with or support every other civil rights group I come in contact with. Yet I have never been given instructions to use the phrase “Holiday Tree” and I don’t know anyone who has. I’ve never been told not to say Merry Christmas, either. It never even happened when I was living and working in New York City in a psychiatric hospital where many of my colleagues and patients where Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist, and other beliefs in addition to Christian.

I do tend to say Happy Holidays, unless I knew the person I spoke to prefers otherwise, simply because it makes sense to me. It’s inclusive. Everybody celebrates the arrival of the New Year, even if they don’t celebrate Christmas. In any case, it doesn’t take much to see that the word “holiday” has its origin in the words “holy” and “days,” so if they are Jewish, Happy Holidays will cover Hanukah. If they are Muslim, sometimes the lunar calendar will bring a feast into line with the season. Perhaps there is a Hindu or or Buddhist holiday, too. Hence the phrase is simply a gesture of magnanimity and inclusion. It is not ideological and it is certainly not meant to be aggressive or to exclude Christmas.
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On the other hand, it seems very much contrary to the warm, generous and joyful spirit of the Christmas holidays that I grew up with to force people to say Merry Christmas or two scowl at them when they wish you Happy Holidays as I have seen people do recently. Joy cannot be forced. A false smile looks like a grimace and is usually detectable. If you want people to feel the Christmas spirit, show them respect and be gracious. That’s what Jesus did.

It is not that I think most non-Christians object to being wished a Merry Christmas, and I don’t think any harm is done by saying it too them, provided it is sincere and not an aggressive political act. It’s just kind of insensitive and reflects badly on the well wisher if he knows that the people he is saying it to don’t celebrate the the holiday, but he insists on saying it anyway.  It’s kind of like wishing Happy Birthday to a kid when it it isn’t his birthday.  In fact, it’s like wishing it to a kid whose not even invited to the party or allowed to go if he were.

Using the same metaphor, while it is appropriate and sweet for those around me to wish me Happy Birthday, it is at best a bit crass for me to tell them to do so. Likewise, it is rude to force people who do not hold a religious belief to extend greetings based on those sentiments. It is also wrong to keep them from doing so. Yet it’s becoming a holiday tradition for media outlets like Fox News to fire up folks about which stores are saying Merry Christmas and which are saying Happy Holidays to customers. Why should we care? Do you really want that store greeter or cashier grumbling at “Merry Christmas, sir” just because he’s ordered to? That’s not a sentiment that should be forced.  If the person does not want to say it, I’d prefer they not do so.

Maybe my sentiments are prejudiced somewhat by knowing what it is like to be on the other end. When I was living and working in Morocco and religious holidays rolled around, it seemed to mean a great deal to people when I wished them well with the appropriate Muslim greeting in Arabic. Of course, no one ever told me I had to.

On the other hand, during my first year there I learned the power of the phrase Merry Christmas. The first Christmas in Morocco was tough. It was 1990, and I was at a conference of English teachers. Christmas is a special holiday in my family and I had had never been away from them during it before so I went to the conference to keep myself busy. It helped, but only some. I’d only been in country for about 5 months, and I was really homesick. Morocco is overwhelmingly Muslim, with a small Jewish population, so Christmas is not a holiday.  On Christmas Day the conference was in full swing. During a morning break I was having tea when a Moroccan woman I didn’t know came over to me, put her hand on my shoulder and said quietly “Merry Christmas.” I had nearly forgotten it. I looked up her, dumbfounded. I hope I smiled; I’m not sure I did. She smiled and walked away.

I never saw her again, but that Muslim woman brought a crashing wave of nostalgia on me, and made me wish I was home. But she also made me deeply happy. She connected with me through mutual respect, and I will always appreciate that. That is the spirit in which we should offer holiday greetings. They should not be offered simply because, “this is what the company says I have to say.”

So finally I say to you, anyone who has read this far, in the spirit of Christmas and I know and understand it, with warmth, love and genuine caring, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukah, Happy Eid Al-Adha, Joyous Solstice, Happy Kwanzaa, Solemn Human Rights Day,  Respectful Bill of Rights Day, Holy Bodhi Day and a Wonderful whatever else may occur during this season. May you share our joy and hospitality, whatever your beliefs, and someday may we all come to realize the vision of PEACE ON EARTH.

This year I’m going to try and return it to some of the joy I used to know by stripping away some of the commercialism and staying out of the malls.  I fail to see how all that pushing and shoving has anything to do with Christmas, either.  I will join in a new kind of Christmas, the Buy Nothing Christmas.