There are a many people who are worried about how religious holidays, such as Christmas, are being hijacked by our society. Everyone wants to make money off of Christmas, but they want to repackage it so as not to offend anyone. It used to be, that wherever you went, people would shout out, “merry christmas”. But now new greetings have replaced the word “Christmas” in an attempt to make the holiday more “inclusive”, and to eliminate or at least minimize, any “religious” connection.
Maybe the change started when greeting card companies saw that there was an undeveloped market selling holiday cards to God haters and atheists. ( From my personal observations most other religions don’t have a problem with the expression ) Or maybe politicians decided to remake the holiday out of fear of losing a non-christian voting block. However it started, it didn’t take corporate executives and government officials long to jump on board. After all their incompetence and greed had made them too many enemies to risk offending anyone else. In fact they might even be able to market this new “christmas” censorship as proof that they were concerned with the, “greater good” of our society.
Now to be honest, I was never really a big fan of “merry christmas”, anyway. It always seemed to me to be too contrived, and so out of touch. It seemed too much like asking people, “how are you?”, an expression devoid of any real meaning. Not that I am a rebel or anything, it’s just that I think things, especially holiday greetings, should be real. For me the problem with “merry christmas” has never been with the word “christmas”, which has lots of meaning, but rather the word “merry”. “Merry”, always reminds me, for some reason, of ” Robin Hood”. and is a word with no common usage, at least in the world I live in.
The problem is, people want to participate in christmas, and to participate in something it has to be called something. It has to be called something but there is a problem with the word, “Christmas”. So to accomodate those who aren’t christians, governments and corporations have pledged to protect everyones’ ear from having to be exposed to any expression connected to the christian religion. We will now be able to pay our parking ticket or buy our “holiday” presents, without Jesus being around. We will have new expressions, so that we can truly enter into the festivities of the occasion. “Merry christmas will now be replaced by, “happy holiday” or “seasons greetings” or even “bah humbug” if you like.
The good news is that for those of us who do believe in “Jesus being the reason for the season”, our greetings ( more than ever) will stand out in stark contrast to the politically sanitized versions that are the current rage. And with all the controversy over “merry christmas”, it just might become my favourite expression this year.
So, I hope you have a very Merry Christmas !
1 For The Road 