Christmas has taken a lot of hits over the past several years because some lunatic decided that we needed to make the Christmas season a little more inclusive for everybody.
Christmas has become the centre of a debate about whether the name discriminates against non-Christians and has ignited the flames of dissent from both sides of the argument.
For me, there is only one side to the debate: leave Christmas alone and let a long-held tradition survive this ridiculous attack over its name.
For the record, I am not a particularly religious person, but I do understand how important this season is to the people who place their sense of spiritual identity in their religious beliefs. The Christmas season is one of the cornerstones of the Christian faith in most of its denominations and the practitioners of this faith place a great deal of importance in the name and what it represents to them.
What can possibly be gained from re-labeling the Christmas season into the more generic “holiday” season? The term “holiday season” is more aptly applied to the summer season when most people actually plan holidays.
Most of the heat about Christmas has extended from articulate agnostics and atheists who can put forth a pretty good argument about their non-belief in Christianity and how the Christmas label has excluded them from enjoyment of the season because it is based upon religious tenets that are unpalatable to them as non-believers.
They claim that an exclusionary label like Christmas does not allow them, as people of no faith, and people of other faiths outside of Christianity to join in the reindeer games, so to speak, of the Christmas season. Thus the Christmas label is offensive to them and should not be allowed to dominate the frozen landscape of winter in December.
One of the things that bother me most about these clowns is their constant need to seek out social causes that feed their sense of smug superiority as they attempt rewire the world around them into their idea of a Utopian society.
They believe that they have the right social plan where everybody is equal and included in society, yet they seek to trample and eradicate the religious convictions of millions of people along the way to equality.
Apparently freedom of religious expression is not something that fits into their new Utopia.
There really is a simple solution to their Christmas problem but people who want to unravel the social fabric of Christmas rarely like simple solutions. The Holiday people could choose to completely ignore Christmas and agree to live and let live with the Christian angle on the season. Or, if the Holiday people chose to put up a tree, then they could call it a holiday tree and not expect others to do the same in their more traditional Christmas circles.
Every religion has been used by unscrupulous people for personal gain over the centuries and the subsequent damage to the faiths’ reputations has added fuel to the fire for the Holiday people as they attempt to dismantle the Christmas season.
However the basic philosophy of goodwill toward others is never more evident than during the Christmas season and this fact alone is a good enough reason to save Christmas.
Jim Sutherland is a local freelance writer.