Tuesday, December 14, 2004
THE NEWS OBSERVER
has an article documenting the increasingly heated debate over "Merry Christmas." One group has recommended boycotting the stores that refuse to use the words.
The Rev. Patrick Wooden may not have realized it, but when he took out a full-page ad recently in The News & Observer urging Christians to shop at stores with "Merry Christmas" displays, he was contributing to a national grass-roots effort to reverse the secularists of Christmas.
Laments that Christmas is becoming a secular holiday are not new. What's new are the assertiveness and urgency around the issue.
Across the country, Christian church members and coalitions have taken to phone, e-mail and media outlets to reassert the religious nature of Christmas in a society that often prefers the more inclusive "Happy Holidays"...
Stores--shopping--after all, really is not Christian. Those stores have been enjoying the fruits of the celebration of Christmas for a long time. Yet they want to bite the hand that feeds them. Reject the very spirit of this winter holiday while still expecting to make profits off of the people who celebrate it.
What if Christians did truly return to celebrating Christmas...in other words, turning it back into a religious holy day, and stop the commercialisation entirely. That should make the stores happy, right? No longer would they have to decide whether to allow their clerks to say "Merry Christmas" or not. They could say "Happy Holidays" to their hearts content. There would be Kwaanza shoppers, and Hanukkah shoppers, just no Christmas shoppers. Surely it would make them happy not to have Christians shopping for Christmas, wouldn't it? The problem of what to wish their customers would just evaporate.
Somehow I have a suspicion that this is not what they want at all!
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