Weird quotes pop uninvited into my head at times, such as this one from Ebeneezer Scrooge, "Every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart." And what prompted that thought in my mind was the ongoing call to action I am bombarded with on Christian radio to put Christ back into Christmas by boldly proclaiming and loudly trumpeting "Merry Christmas" instead of the anathematized "Happy Holidays". This debate on the use of words occurs every year and I wonder how one can make the leap from "Happy Holidays" to an open war on Christianity that seeks to purge every reference to the good news out of our lives? The fact already remains that at least in America we have allowed corporate greed and gross consumerism to squeeze out whatever good news Christmas once had and turn it into a completely secularized, end of the year marketing ploy on which the fate of the economy always seems to hang. I'm not ready to follow Ebeneezer's course of action, but leave me out of the debate. I'm much more content to say to secular marketers this other Scroogeism, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine;" that is to say, if all you see in this Christmas is dollar signs then enjoy calling it whatever floats your boat or bolsters your bottom line, but when you ultimately find that it is still not enough, then stop by for a cup of cheer and let me tell you what I think the season is really about.
Nothing that the world does, or does not do, can detract from my own marking of Christmas, and it must be the reality of Christmas that resides in our hearts that bears witness to the grace of the season more than this annual war of words about what to call Christmas. Don't we have other things to be about in this time then worrying whether this is only the first domino in a row of anti-Jesus actions? The world ignored Jesus at His first coming, the bible seems to indicate that it will be woefully unaware when He returns to fulfill all things. Why does it surprise us then when it seems that the world has other priorities, business for example, during this holy season? But the fact remains that while the coming of Jesus often goes unnoticed, it was a real event in history, and it remains an annual reality in the lives of those who have been touched by it. And as Forrest Gump said, "And that's all I have to say about that."
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