Season’s Greetings

Recently I received an email, forwarded by a friend to a long mailing list, which challenged me to declare my preference: “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas.”

The gist of this message was that "Happy Holidays" was used only to be politically correct while "Merry Christmas" was the preferred greeting for the vast majority of people, a majority being manipulated and put upon by the PC few.

Each recipient was urged to include his or her name on a list, below the message, and indicate the preferred greeting, then forward the message to their own email address list. The roll of greetings that followed had 148 names entered. Every entry included a “Merry Christmas.”

I didn’t forward the message, but I did write back to my friend:

As it happens, my standard greeting of "Happy Holidays" has been meant to include the season extending from Thanksgiving to the New Year. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I wish folks a "Merry Christmas." In any case, I don't see any serious religious connotation to merriment.

Nonetheless, when I was the boss at the hospice, I instructed our chaplain to offer a non-denominational prayer at our Tree of Lights ceremony; I knew folks of non-Christian faiths had contributed and would be in attendance. I never pictured this as politically correct—it was simply courteous. It was the prayer that was important, not the formula. (Even the Lord's own Prayer is non-denominational.)

It became part of our hospice lore when, that first year, our chaplain, of Baptist persuasion, began to close his meaningful, nearly poetic prayer with what I'm sure was almost hard-wired phrasing: "This we ask You in the name of, uh...," and he paused awkwardly before the assemblage. He realized too late that his beautiful non-sectarian effort was about to crash and burn. He stumbled through some patched together neutral closing words—and we never let him forget it. "Hey, Jim, tell us about that time you couldn't remember Jesus' name."

The tree itself was called "of Lights" because the emphasis was the lights memorializing our former patients. Their families were our most frequent contributors; a book containing those patients' names was part of the memorial. Obviously, it was a "Holiday" season fund-raiser that would have seemed silly if not for the association with the "Christmas" tree—a holiday custom which, by the way, may have its roots in "pagan" ceremonies. Go figure. 

I think the Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas controversy is a manufactured product. The two phrases have different meanings, different uses. From a Christmas-spirit point of view, at best, it can be quibbling. At worst, it can pervert that spirit of love and inclusion for which Jesus was born—and died. It always saddens me when people try to turn Christianity into a weapon of exclusion and division.

I'm sure most folks see this issue as a matter of Christian pride—but those two words really don't go together.

Amen.

!