Merry Christmas

This week I was in a major chain store. After I made my purchase the cashier wished me a Merry Christmas. I thanked her for wishing me a Merry Christmas rather than "happy holidays" and told her she was the first cashier that had wished me a Merry Christmas this year. She looked at me a bit sheepishly and told me that the chain had reversed its policy banning the phrase and now allowed it due to complaints from quite a few customers. This conversation led me to ask myself a couple of questions.

First, why is the phrase "Merry Christmas" verboten? I know the argument is that some people might be offended or feel excluded. My family doesn't celebrate Halloween because we feel it conflicts with our Christian faith. However, I don't feel the least bit offended or intimidated if someone wishes me a "Happy Halloween". I certainly don't feel excluded, after all that's the whole point, I don't want to be included. I certainly don't want to be so self-absorbed that I want the 90% of Americans who do celebrate Halloween to pretend they aren't celebrating by substituting the generic "holiday" for Halloween. I wouldn't expect people to replace witches with colored leaves the way we are expected to replace the Christ child with snowflakes during Christmas. I suspect the real agenda the "tolerance" crowd has is not inclusiveness, but rather imposing their worldview on the majority.

Perhaps the people who are offended by the birth of Jesus could start their own holiday in the same way Ron Karenga did in the sixties with Kwanzaa (disclaimer for the hyper-sensitive; I am not suggesting people who celebrate Kwanzaa are atheists, it's just an recent example of starting a new holiday). They could celebrate Darwin's birth, call it "Charlesmas". Instead of "Peace on earth and good will to men" they could greet each other with something like "Random chance and survival of the fittest to you!".

The thing that really has me puzzled is this; why do Christians put up with this silliness. After all, we don't have the KGB or Gestapo monitoring our mail and pulpits for forbidden speech; at least not yet. Yet we send cards celebrating the same mysterious snowflake holiday as non-Christians. I know of many Churches that are going to be closed this Christmas because they know no one will show up. After all, we know that the true meaning of the "holiday" is about spending time with family and watching football. It is no longer about celebrating God putting off the imperishable to come to this earth in the form of a helpless baby with the express purpose of taking the punishment we deserve for breaking God's laws by dying a cruel death on a cross. Merry Christmas.