I’d love to bestow my personal award for the most Scrooge-like anti-Christmas accounts I’ve heard, but where would I start? There are so many examples. And every year, they seem to get more and more hilarious.
There is the one from New York, where mall operators opted for a Santa display designed not to offend anyone. They went with a futuristic white contrivance that looked like a hollowed-out plastic glacier. When patrons threatened the mall with a boycott, the politically-correct monstrosity was dismantled.
At Cornell University, a committee told students not to hang mistletoe because some people might associate it with the Christian religion. Not to be outdone, University of Tennessee administrators disgorged a reminder intended to “ensure your holiday party is not a Christmas party in disguise,” which included the injunction to refrain from exchanging “Secret Santa” gifts and to offer only inclusive refreshments “not specific to any religion or culture.”
At another college (I’m not sure which one) it was explained that students are free to display traditional Christmas-themed items in their dorms — provided, of course, they display them discreetly.
Elected officials are always tinkering with Christmas, of course, so in Roselle Park, N.J., a councilwoman quit after the town council decided to name the town’s Christmas tree lighting event a (wait for it …) “Christmas tree lighting.” She was incensed at the council’s exclusionary bent.
I think my favorite one emanates from Fort Collins, Colo., where a special task force recommended that red and green lights be banned from city displays. The colors of red and green, the committee explained, have known religious connotations.
To be safe, said the Fort Collinites, white lights work best.
Some people — the more religious ones — get pretty incensed by all the people getting incensed about Christmas. They don’t appreciate being told that their celebration of the birth of Christ Jesus is unappreciated. On top of all that, they’re constantly told that this “war on Christmas” that they decry is a figment of their imaginations.
Poppycock. If the above examples (and there are so many more available to us) don’t constitute an assault on the historical essence of the holiday, what else could it be?
And it’s all so odd. Nobody wishes to diminish the meaning of Hanukkah. Nobody wants to undermine the Fourth of July so that the English won’t feel excluded. Presidents Day is still about U.S. presidents (even the ones that nobody likes) and no one complains.
Christmas is not only about “good will toward men,” as President Obama stated recently. It’s also about the birth of a Savior, the Lamb of God. But the good thing about Christmas is that it’s never been meant to be exclusionary, in spite of what the Scrooges say.
Celebrate it any way you like. It’s still about love and joy and peace and hope and renewal, any way you cut it. It’s OK to make Santa the center of your Christmas, if that’s what you prefer. It’s the season of kindness, the season of selfless giving. So display all the red and green lights you want — and white ones, too.