Get Ready for the Fake "War on Christmas"

It's that time of year when religious nuts explode in anger over the notions of diversity, inclusiveness, and respect for others.

(This was one of my earliest Substack posts, written a year ago. It’s still a minor and humorous issue. With all the actual and terrible wars going on in this world today, it’s incredible that this is the war that infuriates some people.)

Image courtesy of Freepix

It’s that time of year again, when people who don’t know me from a hole in the wall wish me a “Merry Christmas,” assuming I believe that December 25 marks the birth of a man born to a virgin, the son of the Jewish deity. (I absolutely do not.) I see no need to burst their bubble or ruin their joy, so I generally say nothing, nod and smile, and trudge on. (If I know the person, and I see their greeting as an autonomous response, not delivered with any evangelical or conversionary reasoning behind it, I’ll wish them “Happy Holiday,” which is the greeting I prefer.)

(I have many Christian friends and relatives who I know celebrate the holiday, and I do of course wish them a “Merry Christmas.”)

“Happy Holidays” has become the default greeting of most department stores, big box outlets, and many other businesses that come in close contact with the public. It’s for good reason.

Today, Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN are pretty where you will hear the rants against “Happy Holidays” and the claim of a “War on Christmas.” Everyone else would be too embarrassed to look like such jackasses.

The “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings” salutations make much more sense in pluralistic America than the narrow and sectarian Christian greeting. There may have been a time where very few Americans were not Christians, and would thus be offended or feel neglected, but those days are long gone.

THE AMERICA OF TODAY IS GROWING LESS CHRISTIAN BY THE MINUTE

According to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), in 2022, a little over sixty seven percent of Americans identified as Christians, and the younger people are, the less likely they are to call themselves Christians. Among people 18-29, only half call themselves Christians. Among those professed Christians are denominations like Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not celebrate the holiday. A full quarter of all Americans state they are not affiliated with any religion. About eight percent are minority religions including Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, among others.

According to a study last year by the prestigious Pew Institute, by 2070, only 46% of Americans will identify as Christians. That means Christians will not be a majority as of some date in the late 2060’s

What this means is that when one tosses out the “Merry Christmas” greeting today, the odds are one in three it’s being given to the wrong person. In about forty years, the odds will in fact be that the person being greeted is not Christian.

On the other hand, nearly every religion has some holiday in the late Fall-early Winter, so a salutation of “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” is the appropriate way to go if you don’t know the specific preferences of the greetee.

It’s the future, so get on board now!

BUSINESSES WANT TO GAIN CUSTOMERS AND MAKE MONEY, AND OFFENDING PEOPLE IS A TERRIBLE WAY TO GO ABOUT DOING THIS.

It is difficult for some devout Christians to understand this, but imposing a social code that exalts one religion over another by formalizing its greeting as the go-to model, is indeed offensive to people of other religions. It’s by no means on the same level as the racist, antisemitic or Islamophobic outbursts with to we have become all too familiar, but is nevertheless insulting to people of other faiths, or no faith, to imply that the Christian greeting is the only appropriate one. It’s not reasonable to assume another greeting is a hostile act, an anti-Christian gesture, a “War on Christmas.”

We know that the one third of America who are clearly not Christian will not take offense at a secular or inclusive greeting. The same holds true for liberal Christian denominations, like Unitarian-Universalists, Quakers, United Church of Christ.

We cannot assume that every sincere Christian, as opposed to Trump’s White Christian Nationalist movement, are particularly concerned about being greeted with something other than “Merry Christmas.” After all, isn’t it the thought that counts?

The notion that businesses are in some conspiracy to undermine Christianity for evil purposes, is just another loony-toon idea from the far right religious nut brigade. Businesses simply don’t want to alienate customers, and there is no evidence that anyone cares except a handful of noisy nut-jobs with nothing better to talk about.

No rational person believes there is a “War on Christmas.”

There’s no war on anybody, at least not on a battlefield of holiday greetings. Anyone in America is free to greet others as they wish, and the people being greeted are free to respond or not respond as they see fit. The religious nuts simply want to control what the rest of us say or hear. They are upset that public schools cannot adopt the Christian viewpoint and holidays as the official line, they are upset that other religions receive equal treatment under the law, and that Christianity does not receive a special and exalted place among the other religions in America. Those notions fly in the face of our Constitution, and are decidedly un-American.

America is not, and never was, a “Christian Nation.”

The only “war” that’s been declared is a war on truth from extremist Christians, who hew to the false history that the United States was founded on the Christian religion and that Christianity is a fundamental part of our society. This is, of course, a bunch of hogwash. The Founding Fathers themselves were hardly religious men; Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson and James Madison were “deists,” meaning that they believed there probably was some Supreme Being or Prime Mover who set the universe in motion, and then stepped over to the sidelines, never to be seen or heard from again. Tom Paine was an outspoken atheist. James Madison was a principal author of the Federalist Papers and the Constitution. He insisted that the Constitution contain its provision banning any religious test for office, and wrote the First Amendment, beginning “Congress shall make no laws respecting an Establishment of Religion.”

If a person insists upon greeting all people with “Merry Christmas,” even when obviously inappropriate, that’s their right. They should accept that many will see this greeting as irrelevant, annoying, inappropriate, perhaps a tad arrogant. If there are Christians who think every American celebrates their religious holiday, this, as we say in the law, “assumes facts not in evidence.”

It is also possible that upon hearing ”Happy Holidays,” some irate religious extremist will see it as the equivalent of lobbing a grenade at them, but that’s their problem. There’s room in “Happy Holidays” to accommodate Christmas, along with any other holiday. When someone greets me with “Merry Christmas,” there’s no space in there for my identity, and I’m not interested in adopting theirs. Unlike them, I don’t have any interest in telling them or anyone else how to greet people.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! SEASON’S GREETINGS!

Image courtesy Dreamspix

THE TRUTH WILL WIN IF IT IS TOLD!

Stephen Shaiken is an attorney and author. He has written extensively on Constitutional issues. He has litigated scores of Constitutional questions in federal appellate courts and is a member of the United States Supreme Court Bar.

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