How to End the Christmas Wars
Is there a war against Christmas? If so, let’s stop it!
The Wisconsin Examiner bills itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit news bureau covering state government in Madison, the capital of Wisconsin. So the headline of the article it published on November 13, 2020 was presumably a simple statement of what the Examiner considered to be objective fact:
“Evers Fires First Shot in the 2020 War on Christmas”
As the article explains, when Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers announced that “hope” would be the theme for the “holiday ornaments” the state’s schoolchildren would be making that winter, he set off a firestorm. The flames were especially hot because his refusal to speak of Christmas ornaments in 2020 was the sequel to his 2019 proclamation that the evergreen placed in the Capitol rotunda that year would be a “holiday tree” rather than a Christmas tree.
Many Wisconsinites saw these pronouncements by their governor as exactly what the Examiner’s headline proclaimed them to be: shots deliberately aimed and fired in a war against Christmas.
Many Christians firmly believe there’s a war on Christmas
According to a YouGov survey, 40% of Americans think there definitely is a war on Christmas. Many of them are Christians who believe secularists are trying to turn the traditional Christmas season into “the holidays” as part of an effort to ban religious references from the public square.
Here’s how one well-known Christian leader puts it:
Stores, schools and communities across America continue to find new and intolerant reasons to remove any religious references to Christmas, stripping it of any holy or historical significance. Christian songs, prayers and other spiritually vital connections to the Lord Jesus Christ are deleted or diminished.
— Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham
“Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”?
The fact that many merchants now instruct their store clerks to say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” to customers is seen as one of the foremost battlefronts in the Christmas wars. As one critic puts it:
“Happy holidays!” Every time a supermarket checker or store clerk greets you with those words instead of “Merry Christmas,” you have met another soldier in the war against Christmas.
— John Gibson in his book, The War on Christmas
For many who value Christmas primarily as a celebration of the coming of Christ into the world, that there is a war being waged against Christmas seems undeniable.
Yet many others do deny it.
Secularists and academics scoff at the idea of a war on Christmas
The declaration made by one academic is typical:
“There is no war on Christmas… [It] doesn’t exist. It never has.”
— David Kyle Johnson, Professor of Philosophy at King’s College
And Michelle Goldberg, in an article entitled “How the secular humanist grinch didn’t steal Christmas,” insists that rather than a real war on Christmas, there’s only “the burgeoning myth of a war on Christmas, assembled out of old reactionary tropes, urban legends, [and] exaggerated anecdotes.”
How can it be that people on one side of the issue see a fierce fight being waged against Christmas and all it stands for, while those on the other side are convinced that the war against Christmas is entirely imaginary?
What “Christmas” are we talking about?
I think the problem is that the combatants on both sides of the issue aren’t really talking about the same thing. Instead, they are conflating three different end-of-year celebrations. I have designated the three as:
1. Christmas
2. XMAS
3. The Holidays
By disentangling the three, and recognizing that “Christmas”, “XMAS” and “The Holidays” are not really trying to occupy the same space, we can call a truce in the Christmas wars.
Let’s take a quick look at each of them.
What is Christmas?
For Christians, the Bible is very clear about what Christmas is all about:
Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”
— Luke 2:10–12, NKJV
For Christians, Christmas is the celebration of God’s greatest gift to mankind.
It is the proclamation of “good tidings of great joy” that because Christ came into this world to redeem us, we have the promise of eternal life, and with it, peace and goodwill on earth. For Christians, Christmas is from beginning to end all about Christ.
What is XMAS?
In a literal sense, “XMAS” is simply a widely used abbreviation for “Christmas.” But for our purposes, I’m using the term to designate the cultural and commercial expression of the ideals of Christmas.
XMAS is Santa Claus, family gatherings, and presents under the tree.
XMAS attempts to capture the spirit of Christmas but with only the faintest acknowledgement of the Christ of Christmas.
What is “The Holidays”?
“The Holidays” is, in essence, a secular end-of-year/New Year celebration. While retaining some of the most beloved trappings of XMAS, such as family gatherings and exchanging gifts, “The Holidays” deliberately and specifically excludes any references to the Christian underpinnings of Christmas.
“The Holidays” deliberately excludes any reference to the Christian roots of Christmas.
How to End the Christmas Wars
The key to resolving the Christmas wars is understanding that these celebrations are distinct — they are not the same thing!
Here’s how they intersect:
To end the Christmas wars, let’s just allow people to choose which “Christmas” they want to celebrate!
Christians want to celebrate the true Christmas and the Christ it represents.
Secular people may prefer to celebrate “the holidays” with no reference to Christ at all.
And huge numbers of people in countries around the world, Christians and non-Christians alike, prefer to include a large element of XMAS, with Santa bringing gifts to all good children, in their year-end celebrations.
If we’ll simply allow people to choose the celebration they prefer for themselves, there will be nothing to fight about!
A little tolerance for the choices of others will go a long way
Christians should remember that Christmas is not a biblically mandated observance, and no one has a duty to celebrate it. So, if non-Christians want celebrate a Christ-less “holiday” season, that is their prerogative.
Christians can’t expect people who don’t value what Christmas stands for to act as if they do.
On the other hand, secularists should stop trying to prevent any explicitly religious associations with the public celebration of Christmas.
For example, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is a much-beloved television special that has been broadcast every Christmas season since 1965. Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip that gave birth to Charlie Brown and his pals, wanted to have one of them (Linus) speak to the true meaning of Christmas by reciting the story of the birth of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke. But to get that scene included, Schulz had to fight tooth and nail against strong opposition from network executives who feared that their audience would be put off by any allusion to (gasp!) religion in a broadcast about Christmas.
Schulz won his fight, and Linus’s recitation has become one of the most cherished highlights of the entire show.
Many champions of “inclusion” fail to realize that their insistence on “The Holidays” as the only year-end celebration fit for public exposure is actually an attempt to impose their own values on everyone else.
That is not what “inclusion” means!
Let’s Call a Truce in the Christmas Wars!
The real cause of the “war on Christmas” is the determination of each side, the believers and the secularists, to force everyone else to celebrate the season in what that group considers the “right” way.
If we’ll just allow believers to celebrate Christmas, secularists to celebrate “The Holidays,” and everybody to include as much of XMAS as they desire in their year-end celebrations, the Christmas wars will end.