catholicsphere

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe wrote an article in the November 30th edition about a “48-foot white spruce installed on the Boston Common — an annual gift from the people of Nova Scotia — identified on Boston’s official website as a “holiday tree”.

And so it begins again: the annual effort to neuter Christmas, to insist in the name of “inclusiveness” and “sensitivity” that a Christian holiday celebrated by something like 90 percent of Americans not be called by its proper name or referred to in religious terms. We all know the drill by now. Instead of “Merry Christmas,” store clerks wish you a “happy holiday.” Schools close for “winter break.” Your office throws a “holiday party.”

Jacoby, a Jew who celebrates Hanukkah, finds this whole thing a bit too much to take.

It’s discriminatory, too. Hanukkah menorahs are never referred to as “holiday lamps” — not even the giant menorahs erected in Boston Common and many other public venues each year by Chabad, the Hasidic Jewish outreach movement. No one worries that calling the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by its name — or even celebrating it officially, as the White House does with an annual “iftaar” dinner — might be insensitive to non-Muslims.

Quite right! But, we’ll go to the extent of calling it something else, yet the traditions and events and decorations do not change. Here, every year, most of us celebrate Christmas — and only a minority observe it for its true reason, in rememberance of Christ’s birth. In fact, with the general public only looking at Christmas as Santa and presents and another excuse to eat, drink and be merry, why is there even a need to “be inclusive” in terms of religion?

Most stores are closed on Christmas. Even McDonald’s typically is closed for part of the day. December 26th this year is Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, yet most stores will be open … having their “after-Christmas sales”. I don’t suspect a trend toward “After-Hanukkah” or “After-Kwanzaa” sales. And, if we changed the “After-Christmas” sale to “After-Holiday Sale”, then it wouldn’t be until after the 1st of the year.

Jacoby finishes his piece, saying:

Does the knowledge that scores of millions of my fellow Americans do all those things make me feel excluded or offended? On the contrary: It makes me feel grateful to live in a land where freedom of religion shelters the Hanukkah menorah in my window no less than the Christmas tree in my neighbor’s. That freedom is a reflection of America’s Judeo-Christian culture, and a principal reason why, in this overwhelmingly Christian country, it isn’t only Christians for whom Christmas is a season of joy. And why it isn’t only Christians who should make a point of saying so.