This time of year, some people seem to get all heated up over the idea that recognizing other religions in December minimizes the importance of Christmas.  I was just listening to it on the radio this morning.  Where once we would see Christmas decorations there are many decorations, the cub scouts sell Hannukah candles as well as wreaths, and companies throw holiday parties instead of Christmas parties.  I remember everything being about Christmas when I was a kid, but I grew up in a Catholic household.  It seemed the older I got, the more inclusive the world got – not just at Christmas but in general.  Nobody expects vegetarians to eat side dishes at parties anymore.  Why is this inclusion so reviled?  I thought I’d look into it.

The 2008 U.S. census data does indicate that 76% of adult respondents identified as Christian, which breaks down into Baptist, Protestant, Catholic, Pentecostal, etc. – even Jehovah’s Witnesses (who don’t celebrate Christmas).  For what it’s worth, that’s down more than 10% since 1990.  Only 4% identified as other religions, but 15% identified as not religious (5% had no comment). 

So I guess you have a pretty good chance that if you say “Merry Christmas” to someone between Thanksgiving and Christmas, they’re actually celebrating it.  But what about the rest of these “holidays”?  According to Wikipedia, the holiday season traditionally included: “Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day (in some countries), New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, [and] Three Kings Day”, but “in recent times, this definition has begun to expand to include Yule, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Thanksgiving and Black Friday.” 

That’s three Christian holidays, three secular, one pagan, one Jewish,one African cultural, one American traditional, and…Black Friday?  A shopping holiday? 

I could pass over that as an anomaly, but I don’t think that it is.  In fact, I think that’s part of the evolution of the holiday season that’s occurring right now, and what people may be upset about.  On one hand, “Happy Holidays” is a nice way of being inclusive for six weeks without inquiring into a person’s religious beliefs (or in the case of Kwanzaa, how strongly they identify with their ethnic heritage).  On the other, if more than 1 in 10 who walk through the doors of the mall aren’t celebrating anything at all, “Happy Holidays” isn’t so much about the holidays anymore as it is a happy, general December greeting. 

For my part, I actually celebrate secular Christmas even though I’m one of the 15% of non-believers.  I love it.  I love the lights and the tree and the presents and the crazy shopping and the cooking and the hugging and the family and friends and mistletoe and all of it.  I don’t put up a manger or sing “Silent Night”, of course – but there’s so much that’s pagan about all of it that I’m probably more accurately celebrating Yuletide than Christmas.  But nobody calls that stuff Yuletide anymore – they’ve wrapped it up in Christmas.  And since so few associate the trees with the pagans anymore, it’s all seemingly secular now.

Frankly, there’s so much that’s secular around Christmas that you could argue that it’s hardly a religious holiday anymore.  If I were a devout Christian, this would really concern me.  I think I’d want to “put the Christ back in Christmas” – I’d be offended by all the non-believers and watered-down Christians (the ones my mother notes attend church 2x/year and openly disagree with its tenets) walking around singing carols.  In fact, there’s a backlash among some Christians who want to return Christmas to a purely religious focus, And, from a religious perspective, I think they’re right. 

So is that why some Christians are mad?  The trivialization of their religion in the face of commercialism and media?  Or is it that they still think that the vegetarians should be satisfied with mashed potatoes for dinner?  That Hanukkah and Kwanzaa (and dare I add the winter solstice) should be recognized quietly and the Christians should do the shopping celebrating?  I don’t know.

I do know that Christmas is not “an American institution”.  Nobody off the Mayflower celebrated Christmas (Puritans disdained it).  Our founding fathers deliberately made it so that we didn’t have a national religion and that all religions would be tolerated.  Lately, I’ve been impressed with the American institutions of not just tolerance but inclusion.  For those who don’t know what to give, I think that’s the perfect present.