The Song Fight Bulletin Board

This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else
By ADAM COHEN
Published: December 4, 2005

Religious conservatives have a cause this holiday season: the commercialization of Christmas. They're for it.

The American Family Association is leading a boycott of Target for not using the words "Merry Christmas" in its advertising. (Target denies it has an anti-Merry-Christmas policy.) The Catholic League boycotted Wal-Mart in part over the way its Web site treated searches for "Christmas." Bill O'Reilly, the Fox anchor who last year started a "Christmas Under Siege" campaign, has a chart on his Web site of stores that use the phrase "Happy Holidays," along with a poll that asks, "Will you shop at stores that do not say 'Merry Christmas'?"

This campaign - which is being hyped on Fox and conservative talk radio - is an odd one. Christmas remains ubiquitous, and with its celebrators in control of the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and every state supreme court and legislature, it hardly lacks for powerful supporters. There is also something perverse, when Christians are being jailed for discussing the Bible in Saudi Arabia and slaughtered in Sudan, about spending so much energy on stores that sell "holiday trees."

What is less obvious, though, is that Christmas's self-proclaimed defenders are rewriting the holiday's history. They claim that the "traditional" American Christmas is under attack by what John Gibson, another Fox anchor, calls "professional atheists" and "Christian haters." But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is not defending America's Christmas traditions, but creating a new version of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681 Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way" a crime.

The concern that Christmas distracted from religious piety continued even after Puritanism waned. In 1827, an Episcopal bishop lamented that the Devil had stolen Christmas "and converted it into a day of worldly festivity, shooting and swearing." Throughout the 1800's, many religious leaders were still trying to hold the line. As late as 1855, New York newspapers reported that Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist churches were closed on Dec. 25 because "they do not accept the day as a Holy One." On the eve of the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in just 18 states.

Christmas gained popularity when it was transformed into a domestic celebration, after the publication of Clement Clarke Moore's "Visit from St. Nicholas" and Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly drawings, which created the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. The new emphasis lessened religious leaders' worries that the holiday would be given over to drinking and swearing, but it introduced another concern: commercialism. By the 1920's, the retail industry had adopted Christmas as its own, sponsoring annual ceremonies to kick off the "Christmas shopping season."

Religious leaders objected strongly. The Christmas that emerged had an inherent tension: merchants tried to make it about buying, while clergymen tried to keep commerce out. A 1931 Times roundup of Christmas sermons reported a common theme: "the suggestion that Christmas could not survive if Christ were thrust into the background by materialism." A 1953 Methodist sermon broadcast on NBC - typical of countless such sermons - lamented that Christmas had become a "profit-seeking period." This ethic found popular expression in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." In the 1965 TV special, Charlie Brown ignores Lucy's advice to "get the biggest aluminum tree you can find" and her assertion that Christmas is "a big commercial racket," and finds a more spiritual way to observe the day.

This year's Christmas "defenders" are not just tolerating commercialization - they're insisting on it. They are also rewriting Christmas history on another key point: non-Christians' objection to having the holiday forced on them.

The campaign's leaders insist this is a new phenomenon - a "liberal plot," in Mr. Gibson's words. But as early as 1906, the Committee on Elementary Schools in New York City urged that Christmas hymns be banned from the classroom, after a boycott by more than 20,000 Jewish students. In 1946, the Rabbinical Assembly of America declared that calling on Jewish children to sing Christmas carols was "an infringement on their rights as Americans."

Other non-Christians have long expressed similar concerns. For decades, companies have replaced "Christmas parties" with "holiday parties," schools have adopted "winter breaks" instead of "Christmas breaks," and TV stations and stores have used phrases like "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" out of respect for the nation's religious diversity.

The Christmas that Mr. O'Reilly and his allies are promoting - one closely aligned with retailers, with a smack-down attitude toward nonobservers - fits with their campaign to make America more like a theocracy, with Christian displays on public property and Christian prayer in public schools.

It does not, however, appear to be catching on with the public. That may be because most Americans do not recognize this commercialized, mean-spirited Christmas as their own. Of course, it's not even clear the campaign's leaders really believe in it. Just a few days ago, Fox News's online store was promoting its "Holiday Collection" for shoppers. Among the items offered to put under a "holiday tree" was "The O'Reilly Factor Holiday Ornament." After bloggers pointed this out, Fox changed the "holidays" to "Christmases."

Both here in Boston and at the Capitol in Washington DC, the annual Christmas tree is being officially referred to as a "holiday tree". And Jerry Falwell has immediately jumped on this as an issue for the Christian right (the people that, as Tom Wolfe points out, we used to just call Christians): he thinks secularists are "trying to steal Christmas". Well, I'm firmly for inclusiveness, and firmly against both religious bigotry and hostility to religion, and I see nothing sensible going on here. Beam me up, Scotty. This shouldn't be a religious issue at all. What is supposed to be the rational basis for objecting to the term "Christmas tree" as a name for the evergreens that are traditionally erected and bedecked with lights at this time of year? That the etymology of Christmas has "Christ" and "mass" in it? You can't expunge religion by switching to "holiday": the etymology of holiday has "holy" in it! And the etymology of the word "Saturday" has the name of the Roman god Saturn in it, but that doesn't mean we should rename Saturday to avoid offending those who honor it as their sabbath, by implying that we honor the pagan gods of ancient Rome. We don't call it that to honor Saturn. Nor do we honor the Norse goddess Freya (who rides into battle on a boar called Hildisvin the battle-swine, by the way) when we call Islam's holy day "Friday". (Notice, in all of these cases phonological change has wrecked the similarity that used to obtain: [kris] doesn't sound anything like [kraist], for example.)

As everyone knows, open commercial promotion of Christmas starts before Hallowe'en (October 31) in this country, and pretty soon it's jingle bells and holly and ivy and silent night in every mall in the land. There's nothing religious about this harmless Christmas nonsense, and it's good for the economy, and you can't conceal which traditional festival is being celebrated. Yes, I say that what President Bush lit up at the White House yesterday is a Christmas tree, and — for once I agree with him and Laura — we should call it that. You see a lot of Christmas trees in America in December, just like you see stars of David and menoras in windows of Jewish homes, and during Ramadan you see a lot of Muslims checking their watches near sundown to see if they can grab something to eat yet... This is a religiously diverse country, with a bunch of well-established holidays, some of which have religious significance for some people. Deal with it. When we break out the eggnog in Language Log Plaza the week after next, I'll be going to — and calling it — the third annual Language Log Christmas party.

roymond wrote:The NY Times "article" is really an editorial. And I agree with it. When faith-based impulses become "legislated" into society in these ways they sort of lose their...well...base of faith. As for the assertion that "holiday" phrases replace the "christmas" ones, please water them down further. It's ironic that all this commercial crap that is christmas shopping is undermining our economy by encouraging us to buy billions of dollars of things we don't need and clothes that don't fit, which are often of a quality such that they won't last even a week of use (if they are indeed ever used). God forbid we develop a culture that values quality and exercises restraint rather than excess. But I guess that wouldn't run up the debt we need to make us slaves to the system.

deshead wrote:Serious question: do folks in the U.S. genuinely care about this?

As an outsider, I'm amazed, continually, daily, at the skill with which American media crafts these non-issues to distract people from events that actually matter.

Murdoch should have named his network "soma", and been done with it.

deshead wrote:Serious question: do folks in the U.S. genuinely care about this?

mkilly wrote:I don't know why people think that trying to be inclusive is anti-Christian. Isn't one of the big principles of Christianity loving everybody, even your enemies? Turn the other cheek? Not going to a store because it's run by racists or homophobes or whatever is one thing, but not going to a store because, say, it's run by Jews that might wish you "Happy Hanukkah" is another entirely.

boltoph wrote:These are times of the year to hole up inside with whiskey and people

fodroy wrote:come passover, i'll only shop at a store if lamb's blood is smeared above the entrance.

mkilly wrote:So every year now they (Fox News, Focus on the Family, their kind, mostly) say that "happy holidays" is anti-Christian and terrible and to not shop at stores that don't say "Merry Christmas."

jack wrote:feliz navidad.

Puce wrote:isn't Christmas on the 25th? I personally don't say "Merry Christmas" on any day other than the 25th because it's not freaking Christmas!

fodroy wrote:

jack wrote:feliz navidad.

i can't believe you just did that. too good to speak the official language of america, not to mention christianity?

jb wrote:

fodroy wrote:come passover, i'll only shop at a store if lamb's blood is smeared above the entrance.

Whereas I will pass over such a store.

fodroy wrote:

jack wrote:feliz navidad.

i can't believe you just did that. too good to speak the official language of america, not to mention christianity?

the Jazz wrote:
In my opinion they're both irritating - but referring to the upcoming school break as "holiday vacation" always bugged me more..