Hey Fellow Christians, Can We Not?
As of twenty minutes ago, Christmas is over, so I don’t feel guilty stirring up a little controversy, especially over something that really hacked me off this year. Buckle your seatbelts, people. It’s time for a little post-Christmas righteous anger.
My family and I went to a lovely Christmas Eve service this year, in which we sang O Holy Night. This song, heralding Christ’s birth, has a lovely lyric that goes:
In His name, all oppression shall cease.
Woof. Does that punch you in the gut like it punches me in the gut? Because if you’re a Christian, I really feel like it should. I hate to be the one to point this out, but we (Christians, as a whole) have done a pretty terrible job lately of living that lyric out. Please keep in mind that I am a middle-class white American Christian and therefore merely an observer and rarely a sufferer of any sort of oppression. But I do feel like I have seen more oppression done in the name of Christ than oppression ceased in the name of Christ lately. Paradoxically, it becomes especially bad around the holidays. That word brings me to my primary example. I call it…
The Happy Holidays Conundrum
If Lord Voldemort had really wanted to make himself immortal, he should have made at least one Horcrux out of a Facebook post about the phrase “Happy Holidays.” Those things cannot be killed. They can be liked. They can be shared. They can be commented on with far too many “amens.” But they cannot be killed. They will not die. They show up every single year, and they seem to be getting more aggressive with time! Here is a vague approximation of the 2013 Edition of The Happy Holidays Post:
“Yesterday, I was out shopping for crap I don’t need, and everything at the mall was the worst! But nothing was worse than the moment when the cashier at the checkout wished me a ‘happy holidays!’
'NO,’ I replied, snatching away my bags full of whatever was on sale near the register. 'MERRY CHRISTMAS!’ (I was glad I corrected her, because how else would this frazzled and overworked young woman know CHRISTMASTIME?)
'I’m sorry, ma'am, but we’re required to say happy holidays!’ The cashier growled, her mouth dripping with the toxic green sludge of political correctness which, as we all know, causes cancer.
'NO,’ I screamed in her face politely. 'MERRY CHRISTMAS!’ The customers behind me began to chant kindly 'CHRIS-MUSS, CHRIS-MUSS, CHRIS-MUSS’ as they lifted me onto their shoulders and we stampeded out of the store, taking down huge displays on our way! Christmas wins again!
And if any of YOU ever tries to say 'Happy Holidays’ to me, I’ll punch you in the throat! Meeeeerry Christmas!!”
Okay, so my retelling may be slightly exaggerated, but not all that much. These tales of “triumphing” over Happy Holidays with Merry Christmas are prolific on my Facebook feed, and every single one of them involves being rude to a stranger. Sometimes the stranger is a fellow shopper who wishes the cashier a happy holidays, in which case the merry-Christmaser is rudely shooting down a person who has managed to be kind in a mall at Christmastime, a pretty incredible feat in itself. More often than not, the stranger is the cashier him or herself, making this rudeness the most despicable of them all.
Working retail in December is hard, y'all. The hours are long, the messes are extensive, the customers are desperate, and the pay does not feel adequate (even if it is). If your boss tells you to say 'Happy Holidays’ instead of 'Merry Christmas’, you do it. You’re often too dead-on-your-feet to even consider doing otherwise. These are the poor and downtrodden upon whom aggressive Merry-Christmasers are imposing their wrath. Is your specific holiday greeting seriously more important than the human being behind the counter? Is it? Because there was a man who valued people more than political issues so much that He came as a humble carpenter and teacher who could speak directly to average people, when He could have easily come as a Roman ruler, a Jewish prince, or a powerful Rabbi. And it’s His birthday that you’re celebrating. And I sincerely doubt that, under those “Merry Christmas” Facebook rants, you would ever see the phrase “Jesus likes this post.”
I think that we, as Christians, have become too unwilling to step into another religion’s shoes. What if we lived in a country where the primary winter holiday was Kwanzaa (or Hanukkah or Winter Solstice or Festivus or Merlinpeen, etc.)? Wouldn’t we rather have somebody say “happy holidays” than “happy [specific other holiday]”? So why don’t we want to afford the same courtesy to other religions as we would hope to gain for ourselves? ISN’T OUR SAVIOR THE ONE WHO CAME UP WITH THE GOLDEN RULE? Or is the real reason for the animosity (as I suspect) a mere soreness of “losing” ground as American culture at large becomes more inclusive of other cultures just as valid but maybe not as vocal as our own? Jesus wasn’t a sore loser. Jesus didn’t make the tax collectors change before He ate with them. Jesus ate with them, and those who saw His love for them changed as a result of it. To paraphrase a brilliant piece by Stephen Colbert, either we have to ignore the way Jesus actually behaved, or we have to acknowledge it and admit that we just don’t want to be that way.
Is a retail cashier saying “Happy Holidays” actually hurting anybody? No. So before you correct him or her, please think about why you are doing it. I’m certainly not asking you to change to saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” You are definitely entitled to say whatever you want for the holidays, and unless I’m talking to someone that I know doesn’t do Christmas, “Merry Christmas” is my default too. I’m just asking you to think about what you do, and who you’re doing it to, and why you’re doing it, before you do it.
I can see the zings of angry commenters like sugarplums dancing in my head: “You don’t want us to stand up for what we believe?” “I’m so tired of all this politically correct BS! I used to be able to say whatever I wanted without offending anyone!” “Merry Christmas points people to Christ, and Happy Holidays doesn’t!” One of the wisest people I have ever met, pastor Todd Wagner, says that people say what they think, but do what they believe. If your “Merry Christmas” comes at the expense of someone else’s happiness, then you are contradicting the selflessness and love that Christmas actually stands for. As for the annoyance of being politically correct, I would point you back to the earlier question of why it bothers you. Are you annoyed that your religion isn’t the only one, and that you now actually have to put effort into considering others as more important than yourself? Graciously accepting a “happy holidays” when you would rather hear “Merry Christmas” is one of the easiest ways you can put others before yourself, which points others to Christ by meaningful actions rather than empty or hypocritical words. It takes so little effort on the part of us Christians to soothe this ridiculous conflict between winter festivities, and cease such a silly oppression in His name.
Remember that in Isaiah 9:6 (my personal favorite Christmas scripture), the prophet proclaims, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Let us channel the legacy of Christ this Christmas season, and every Christmas season to come. Let us not be oppressors, but children of peace.
So, in the words of the great theologians of N*Sync, “Merry Christmas… AND Happy Holidays.”