Holiday Spirit: From the Heart, Not the Mall
Silly me! And here I’ve been thinking that Target, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Kmart and America’s malls are places where people go this time of year to shop. But thanks to the Rev. Jerry Falwell and others in his wing of Christendom, I now know that those stores are there during the holiday season to serve as places of worship. What other conclusion can be drawn?
- Colbert I. King
Having worked in retail in another lifetime, I think I can speak to this pseudo-issue and alleged “war on Christmas” with a fair degree of authority. Inclusiveness is not necessarily a case of a retail store being a shining example of social engineering. It’s simply good business. Retail stores exist to sell things to people…and the thing that everyone needs to keep in mind is that the owner of a retail establishment generally cares little for the religious beliefs of his or her customer. Money is the same color, and carries the same value, regardless of who is spending it. Why, then, would a retail store NOT want to be as inclusive as possible?
While Right-wing, Evangelical nutjobs like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson… even Patrick Buchanan… seem intent on creating an issue out of whole cloth, the reality here is that this is just another attempt by Evangelical Republicans to force their narrow beliefs on those of us fortunate enough not to share them. So much for tolerance and Christian charity, eh?
NEWS FLASH: There is no war on Christianity, and there is no war on Christmas. No retail establishment would dream of marginalizing Christians, nor would they engage in any sort of insidious guerilla campaign against Christmas in an evil, underhanded effort to completely secularize the season. In case any of y’all had forgotten, not all Americans are Christians. Some folks celbrate a quaint little festival called “Hannukah” and still others something called “Kwanzaa”. (Still others celebrate an increasingly popular holiday called the “Bowl Championship Series”.) For Evangelicals to now come to view what has been a retail custom for years as “anti-Christian” and “anti-Christmas” is both the height of arrogance and disrespectful and dismissive of others who do not believe as they do.
Falwell, as he desires his flock to know, wants Americans to do their shopping at stores that greet you with “Merry Christmas” and that celebrate the birthday of Jesus in carols, religious decorations and marketing displays. In my old neighborhood, that used to be called “church.” Not in Falwell’s world. Retailers inclined to greet their customers with the inclusive “Happy Holidays” are being branded by him and his bunch as “anti-Christmas” and have been threatened with boycotts, petitions and letter-writing campaigns. The use of “Season’s Greetings” is viewed by religious rabble-rousers as a sign of discrimination against Christianity and a weak-kneed concession to people who hate Christmas.
First of all, NO ONE HATES CHRISTMAS. OK, so perhaps atheists and other non-Christians may not be as fervently supportive of the holiday, but the retail sector LOVES Christmas. Some retail businesses do upwards of 25% of their yearly business in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. You don’t become successful in retail unless to sell to EVERYONE. Again, whether it comes out of the wallet of a Christian or the wallet of a Satanist, money has the same value. Money knows no ideology or religious doctrine.
On the other hand, retailers displaying Christian symbols are considered friends rather than foes of Christmas, and thus worthy of Falwell’s blessings. Shame, however, on those stores that celebrate the holiday season in a way that doesn’t show favoritism to one religion over another — turn thy face away from those retailers who embrace customers of all faiths or those of none at all. They are regarded in Falwell’s world as enlistees in the war against Christmas. Falwell’s fellow traveler Pat Buchanan wrote in a column titled “Christianophobia” a year ago that “it needs to be said. What we are witnessing here are hate crimes against Christianity — the manifestations, the symptoms of a sickness of the soul … the fear and loathing of all things Christian, coupled with a fanatic will to expunge from the public life of the West all reminders that ours was once a Christian civilization and America once a Christian country.”
Just as there is no war against Christmas, neither is there a war against Christians and/or Christianity. Here’s a reminder that some of y’all may have forgotten. Unless you slept through your American History class in high school, you no doubt learned that America has always been considered a “melting pot”. “One nation, under God” can and does mean different things to different people. This hardly represents a war against Christianity; it simply recognizes the reality that America is populated by peoples of many different races, creeds, and cultures. If that truth rubs you the wrong way, you could always move to Idaho….
News Flash, Pat: Stores sell stuff. To everyone. That’s what they do. They’re not churches. They are stores.
I confess to being confused. Why is it that, as a lifelong Christian, I am not the least bit offended if a store clerk or a newsroom colleague greets me with “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”? And if my employer chooses to go without Christmas displays in the workplace, why should I really care? (The Post has a huge Christmas tree in its lobby.) What’s more, suppose a store’s advertising is stingy with the mentions of “Christmas,” or President Bush decides to send out 1.4 million Christmas cards with the word “Christmas” missing? (Bush did. We got one, too.) The Christian faith, I fervently believe, will somehow manage.
How does a retailer’s decision to not make any customer feel like an outsider take Christmas away from me, or affect my decision to call the evergreen in my living room a Christmas tree or ruin my celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ with my family and friends in church and in our homes? And Jerry Falwell notwithstanding, I’d just as soon keep Christmas as far away as possible from stores and the commercialization that has taken over our religious holiday. Spending and making loads of money in a crowded store with “Silent Night” floating in the background hardly strikes me as the way to celebrate what happened in Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago.
Here’s a suggestion: if you are a committed Christian and find yourself concerned by the seeming absence of “Christ” in “Christmas”, you have it within your power to do something about it. Go to church. Donate your money and/or time to a soup kitchen. Buy gifts for a not-so-fortunate family. There are many avenues available for you to live your beliefs and lead by example. Whining about a non-issue simply makes you look small and petty. Of course, it IS easier than actually doing something, no?
