There has been a lot of publicity about churches getting upset first with the White House keeping "Christmas" off its holiday greetings cards, but now it seems they area also upset about stores keeping Christmas out of the holiday shopping experience. Well it was news to me. Coming from the United Kingdom it took me a while not to talk about Christmas all the time and get used to receiving "Happy Holidays" cards, that simply doesn't happen in the UK and you know, no one gets upset about it. Or at least they didn't when I was last living there which admitedly was a while ago now.
But I have to say I always thought the reason America did the "Happy Holidays" thing was out of deference to the large number of non-Christians in the country. As recent surveys show more than half of the adults in the country consider themselves only somewhat religious, or less than somewhat religious, and a full third consider themselves not religious at all. If you're looking not to ram some message from a specific religious order down the throats of people not fully or not at all interested in it, let alone actually offended by it - well "Happy Holidays" seems like a reasonable compromise. However America seems to be full of people celebrating minority holidays who have no inherent interest in them (say St. Patrick's Day), and full of people celebrating holidays that could be construed as being downright offensive (I'm thinking of turkey day).
So I suppose I can see why Christmas gets a few people really upset, I mean why target that particular holiday for secularization?
But really when you look at it, Christmas is really an annomally, its a last remaining vestige of a long history of not celebrating religious holidays. Americans don't really celebrate Easter and as best I can tell never have done - that's pretty much relegated to a Hallmark holiday. There's no fasting for lent, nothing special for Whit Sunday, mother's day doesn't have any religious significance, heck you guys don't even do pancake day (Shrove Tuesday)! All these holidays are celebrated widely to varying extents in my home country with the result that I, a non-Christian can roll them off my tongue a full decade after living there.
So my point is, if you don't widely celebrate all the other ceremonies in this country, then why make a big deal over Christmas? And if you're going to celebrate Christmas then why not all the other religious holidays - from all the religions? That's exactly the point of those aiming to secularize this holiday - either celebrate them all (but even imagine we'll take a public holiday for them all) or not at all. The later is far more consistent with the constitution and, if you're not going to get a public holidy for it, then you are free, completely free, to celebrate these holidays in your homes and your churches as you feel fit.
I personally think the de-secularization of Christmas is a battle that will not be one that will not be won. The mega-corporations that are the mainstays of US consumerism serve the community as a whole and stand a lot to lose by taking the "side" of one religion or the other when marketing their seasonal sales campaigns (which lets face it, is all Christmas is to them - a sales opportunity). For them its far easier to just put "Happy Holidays" than Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanza and Happy everything else than risk some equality class action suit from one religious (or non-religious) group or another.
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