The Christmas Season has officially been ushered in with Black Friday, a slew of brawls around the nation, and the penny-by-penny, 24 hour account of how retailers are faring this year vs. last year. What a way to celebrate the birth of a savior.

“Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas”

That greeting has been a big point of contention for some Christians over the past few years who are irked by the continual push to strip Christ out of Christmas. Typically, I’m on board with taking a stand to insure that “Merry Christmas” is the mandatory greeting, however I won’t be fighting that battle this year. I’m now taking a new stance.

I’d like to specifically request that retailers all over the U.S. stop saying “Merry Christmas” altogether. In fact, I want retailers to remove the word “Christmas” from all of their print ads, radio spots, TV spots, billboards, and in-store displays and decorations. I think it’s the least we can do for our Savior.

“Happy Holidays”. I can’t stand the greeting. It’s like sitting through a watered-down sermon. Taken at face value there’s nothing wrong with it, but there’s nothing real about it either. It holds no power. No truth. It’s a fabricated term; a euphemism.

To strip the word “Christ” out of Christmas is to basically tell Christians again and again that we really don’t matter. Our beliefs are not worthy of being honored by those who preach tolerance in today’s society. We MUST as a people – as a society – in post-modern 21st Century America – honor, appreciate, defend, accept, and embrace with open arms all practices of religion on the entire planet.

From those who place their faith in rocks dug from the ground, or find spiritual vortexes in the red sands of the desert, to the Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and even the vague make-it-up-as-you-go-along new-age stuff that is as easy to define as Jello is to nail to the wall; we must tolerate it all!

We must embrace it!

We must celebrate it! If we don’t we’re bigots, narrow-minded, intolerant.

That’s how it works in American society, right? We are a tolerant people who show respect for all faiths, all beliefs all religions. Just don’t wish me a Merry Christmas! I might get upset. I might get offended. Don’t push your beliefs onto me.

However, I do want you to come into my store and buy lots of presents for your family and all the wrappings, and trappings, and decorations, and everything else you need, nay must have, cannot survive without, in order to celebrate a real…holiday. What holiday?
Christmas!

A word derived from combining “Christ” and “Mass”. The term is Middle English and literally means Mass of Christ, referring to the ceremony commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.

Why such offense? Why does a wish that your Christmas be Merry evoke such horror?

A Gallop Poll released on December 24, 2008 (a day some of us offensive types refer to as “Christmas Eve”, although you may prefer “Holiday Eve”) reveals that while a little more than 80% of Americans identify themselves as being Christians, fully 93% of Americans celebrate Christmas. Not a “Holiday” to be held on December 25, but “Christmas”. They buy “Christmas” gifts, erect “Christmas Trees” and exchange “Christmas Cards”.

So, who is being offended by the term “Merry Christmas”? Is there a basic misunderstanding of what the greeting means? It’s not an insult. There is no implied nor intended repudiation of your chosen faith hidden anywhere in the greeting. Hit me back with a Happy Hanukah. Won’t hurt my feelings.

So again, what’s the issue? I’ll leave that one for you to ponder.

I want to explain now why I’m now onboard with completely removing Christ from the entirety of this spectacle which now carries his name:  Christmas. 

Go back to the original meaning of Christmas; a Mass honoring Christ. Honoring Christ.   Celebrating Christ.  Does Black Friday, held under the pretext of launching the Christmas Season "honor" our Savior?

We Christians ought to be fed up by now with what the secular world has done to our “Holy Celebration” our “Christ Mass” celebrating the birth of the Savior of the World. We ought to refuse to go along with it any further.

We are told in John 17 to be set apart from the world and the admonition is specific. Don’t live like the rest of the world lives.

Yet, there we are! Panting against the cold glass of the Wal-Mart at 5:00 am ready to bust through and race up and down the aisles gathering up the great sales, the latest fads, the stuff we won’t even be able to remember by next Christmas. There we are drooling on cue as the retailers ring Pavlov’s bell telling us “Shop”, “Shop”, “Consume”.

Is there anything more worldly and less Christ-like than a rapid dash through Wal-Mart at 5:00 in the morning scurrying about for mechanical hamsters? In the process do we risk trading our deity for a deal; our belief for a bargain, salvation for a sale? Perhaps we do, if we insist on validating our actions with an indignant “Merry Christmas”.

There is now prevalent a vulgar awful kind of indecency in the way people behave at “Christmastime”, as manipulated by retailers. It all begins with Black Friday. Fist Fights. Brawls. Stores closed due to violence. Honestly, I no longer want that associated with Christ.

I’m not actually suggesting we take Christ out of Christmas, I’m suggesting we take Christmas away from the “Happy Holiday” bunch. Remove our sacred Holy Day from their grimy hands.  Let them have their ubiquitous “Happy Holiday”. Let them build their monuments to retail black ink. Let them manipulate and maneuver consumers like so many cattle being run through the chutes toward the slaughter. Let them celebrate their greed and consumption when they choose and how they choose. They will anyway, but ask them to please not call it Christmas.

Not this.

If it’s just about the cool new toy, the must-have gift of the season, then call it a “Holiday”. Call it whatever you want, but don’t call it Christmas. That’s not Christmas.

When grown men and women, shamefully most of them parents, are giving each other a beat-down over a “door buster” deal it’s really time to step up and ask one simple question; What does this have to do with Jesus?

Sadly, the answer is nothing. Nothing at all.

Happy Holidays belongs to the secular world, and to those who have highjacked Christmas as a way of worship to the almighty dolllar.

Christmas, like most things of the Spirit, is meant to be taken in with reflection, quiet, awe and reverence not amidst a mad dash down a store aisle at the time and place appointed by a retailer looking to pick your pockets bare.

Our family will celebrate Christmas in our home and in our church. We will honor the birth of our Savior.  We will gather as a family and we will read Luke 2 aloud to our children.  We will engage in a Merry Christmas.  In so doing, we will do our best to make certain that our children understand that Christmas is about the unimaginable love of God. 

Ultimately that's all we can do.  The world wide juggernaut driven by retails sales that has become "Happy Holidays" holds none of the meaning of the Spirit of Christmas.  So, it is up to us to convey the true meaning of Christmas; the saving power of Grace, and along the way we should be content to miss a sale, but determined not to miss a savior.