There Probably is a "War on Christmas"...
...but Christmas is clearly winning.
It’s the Christmas season and the time for eggnog (yuk), festive trees, and cold rain we wished were snow (well, I live in Florida so joke’s on you). It’s also typically the time for the annual “War on Christmas” which, in the spirit of peace and joy, mainly serves as an opportunity for religious conservatives and “woke”1 leftists to hurl scorn at each other. Actually, aside from one Washington Post oped, this year has seemed mostly quiet, so perhaps I shouldn’t poke the bear. Alas, I think the question of whether there’s a “War on Christmas” is an interesting one, so let’s dive in.
Of course, it would be helpful to know what we mean by a “War on Christmas” and, as with any good culture war mud fight, nobody seems terribly concerned with adopting a clear, mutually agreed on definition. Fine, I can roll with ambiguity. I tend to see concerns from the right as falling into two broad categories. First, that Christmas is becoming more secularized and commercialized, and less about Christ, mostly due to religious laziness rather than any conspiracy. Second, that there is an effort by leftists to remove Christmas from the focus of the December holiday season altogether, obviously the more conspiratorial concern.
As to the first question, religious conservatives are almost certainly correct. Heck, even Charlie Brown worried about this decades ago. Christmas remains an enormously popular holiday, celebrated by the vast majority of Americans, but increasingly it is a cultural rather than religious holiday. Yet one could argue that this is part of the genius of the secular Christmas…that it has become a uniting holiday for people, including atheists or non-Christians who enjoy the traditions without the organized religion. The US has a knack for repackaging fun, exciting holidays that are exportable (see Halloween), and the US version of Christmas is precisely this.
The more interesting question, I think, is whether there’s an effort by some on the left to eradicate Christmas altogether as some kind of hegemonic, oppressor holiday. Such efforts aren’t unheard of…after all the Puritans attempted to end the celebration of Christmas, since it’s never mentioned in the Bible and the date itself was coopted (cleverly in my opinion) from the popular Roman Saturnalia festival.
Today’s concerns about a leftist War on Christmas seem to have originated in the early 2000s. This created a kind of click-bait screech fest between charlatans on both the left and right (I have about as much respect for Jon Stewart these days as I do for Pat Buchanan). Underlying it all, there probably was something to the whole idea of an anti-Christmas vibe on the maniacal far left. Corporations are, at root, brutal selfish entities, but they often try to project a kind of commercialized morality. If “inclusivity” is in vogue, corporations will pretend to be inclusive (spoiler: they are not). If “tradition” is in vogue, then corporations will pretend to value tradition (spoiler: they do not). Thus, much of the fighting for the past 20 years has been over language games…can we say “Merry Christmas” or do we have to use “Happy Holidays”? What kind of decorations will Starbucks have on their December cups? Do we have to keep pretending anybody actually celebrates Kwanza?2
The evidence suggests most people don’t really care that much about these specifics and, like so many other culture war debates, the oxygen is robbed by those on our extreme left and right mainly looking for things to fight over. Unfortunately, this can create a perpetual season of unease. I do hear a lot of people joke they can’t say “Merry Christmas” anymore and if this is the main cultural accomplish of leftists as far as the season goes, I’m not sure that’s exactly a resounding record of success for “inclusivity”.
Of course, if you go looking, you can find examples of the truly woke kind. I remember some years ago reading a listserve of academics who seemed to try to one-up each other with the idea of canceling Christmas at universities and teaching straight through the holidays3. The tone was of the stereotypically anti-American, anti-Christian vibe that the Bill O’Reilly’s of the world have aneurysms over. There’s no way universities canceling Christmas would ever happen, though. Academics are notoriously lazy and the idea they’d eschew a month-long vacation for some moral cause is mostly nonsense. Probably it was in-group virtue-signaling. Ok, sure, these people exist, but they’re in the tiniest minority (unfortunately for me, they tend to cluster in the kinds of places I work).
These are mostly the same folks taking potshots at Thanksgiving and Columbus Day (and pretty much any American holiday now that I think of it). There definitely is a kind of person who mistakes self-aggrandizement at the expense of others’ fun as a kind of moral virtue. It’s interesting to consider where they are successful and where they are not. Columbus Day has been an easy target, in large part because few people really care about it, and because Columbus really was an “iffy” guy at best. By contrast, efforts to turn Thanksgiving into nonsense like “Truthgiving” have mainly been met with eyerolls because the holiday is far more popular, and because woke arguments against Thanksgiving are themselves dubious. Christmas is in the latter category (as are holidays like July 4)…immensely popular and leftist arguments against it veer toward the ridiculous.
Probably we all need to be better about tuning out the self-absorbedly loud. Say “Merry Christmas” if you want or “Happy Holidays” if you prefer. Is there a War on Christmas? Sure, of sorts, mainly fought by our most obnoxious and self-centered citizens on both sides of the culture war. Fortunately, though, all evidence suggests Christmas is winning.
I know not everybody loves this term, but no alternative is on offer and leftists tend to disparage any alternative, and so I’m with folks like Freddy Deboer and Nate Silver that these objections are mostly obscurant rather than constructive.
I kid, but estimates range that somewhere between 1-2% of black Americans celebrate Kwanza.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think to save it at the time so you’ll have to take my word for it…or not.