The Language Police

What about the plan to leave the communal, secular culture of Christmas in place but refer to it as "Holiday"? The non-religious images are already so familiar and enjoyed, so this could be the easiest solution. With the idea that it's a "Holiday tree", not a Christmas tree, no one could feel left out. There are many problems with this plan. Holidays by definition are specific, ("holy" or "holi" meaning a special day on the church calendar). In Canada, England and some other countries, "holiday" means "vacation", but in the U.S. it means a significant day set aside to observe something, although not always religious. Holidays and their customs must have their names kept intact if they're going to have meaning. We wouldn't say "holiday candelabra" if what we really meant to say was "menorah" because it would  appear to be either nonsense or ignorant. "Holiday tree" makes sense only as part of a scheme to steer language and thought away from Christmas. As such it is an insidious affront against it.
Ann Bergin, "Tree Lighting" chair for Amherst, New Hamshire disagrees in a recent letter to the local newspaper, where she cites "If one wants to call it a Holiday Tree by all means do so. If one wants to call it a New Year Tree, by all means do so. Residents can refer to it any way they want, it's an individual choice, there are no rules. Citizens in a free country can name and define their holidays, name their trees and express greetings all by themselves, any way they want, without approval of anyone else." I agree we have freedom of speech and appreciate this sentiment. However, it's become too predictable that Christmas is always the holiday that so many feel so free to recreate with language at the expense of so much history and tradition. Surely anyone can see that this has a detrimental effect on Christmas. With our freedom we can make language steering formulas that slight holidays in as many different ways as we can imagine. Eventually, though, someone is going to protest.

Communal Christmas content (anything other than the nativity) is vulnerable to this language steering because of a misconception inherent to holidayization. It is thought that a license to remove the Christmas identity from secular Christmas comes with the secular territory.These secular features are no less authentically Christmas for being non-religious but are different from the nativity because most of society has forgotten their origins. Most people don't connect Santa Claus with  the Bishop of Myra of the third century in what is now Turkey, and there is even less awareness connecting pre-Christian observances to their counterparts in Christmas today. The nativity goes untouched by holidayization because it is the basis for one of Christianity's major holidays Christianity is alive in the present and there is organized group support of the nativity but there isn't the same understanding or organization to keep secular Christmas from turning into "Holiday." People will occasionally make light of the nativity. One of the first to do this was probably television's irreverent comedy "Laugh In" with it's magi parody, and the newspaper comic "Bizarro". But no one has figured out how to take Christ out of the nativity so it can become part of "Holiday."

Now that the nativity has been quarantined to make it less of an imagined threat, and secular Christmas is what remains in public, we can see why it's important for secular aspects of Christmas to retain their Christmas name and identity.This web site joins the effort to keep the connection between all aspects of Christmas and the authentic name.

We're seeing a lot of Christmas-turned-into-"Holiday," with changes in
language more than the actual removal of trees and other symbols. Unfortunately, changing it's name is the same thing as removing it. Anyone who grew up enjoying Christmas and thinking surely people will always recognize Christmas no matter what it's called, would probably be surprised to learn there are real outward signs showing that some people aren't recognizing some aspects of Christmas as belonging specifically to Christmas and that before long some of our most familiar Christmas images and icons could belong instead to "Holiday." The subtitle of "Christmasrapping",
" ...toward  a "Holiday"-free Christmas" means that the content belonging to Christmas should keep it's authenticity and not be erased or diluted by language changes that make it appear generic. "Holiday" can be used whenever there is actual doubt about what observance is being portrayed."

We mustn't for a moment underestimate the power of language in our everyday lives. In her book "The Language Police", Diane Ravitch tells about how various pressure groups from the right and left seek to control what we read and ultimately what we think. Editors are happy to erase entire history chapters by purging texts of words they fear might be charged or offensive to someone. Policing starts as early as when children are taught to read. In this case the hope is we'll forget Christmas and be content with "Holiday". Who knows what chunks of cultural heritage will be deemed unsuitable and banned next? A specific name may lead to an inquiry and an understanding. Without names, things are forgotten. If we are content to have our vocabulary pared down to rudiments then perhaps our range of thought will be also. I don't want to live in a world where things are stripped of their history and identity.

Language policing is an important tool for erasing culture, and holidayization is by definition, primarily a movement of negation and nihilism, with the name and idea of "holiday" an admission of this. We've seen that attempts have been made to aggrandize other holidays so that no one will feel marginalized by Christmas, but it's impossible for them to compete on the scale at which Christmas succeeds. This is why "holiday" is an essential part of the plan. Because it's so unclear how or if other holidays express themselves in the public arena,"Holiday" acts as an umbrella term for all observances but specifically helps obscure the fact that other observances are smaller and don't have the public persona that Christmas has. Signs of Christmas are being removed but the secular signs that are allowed to remain on public display continue to form our collective concept of December's festive season. At the same time we hear constant references to "the holidays" as Hanukkah is vying for prominence and looking more like the Jewish Christmas. Since complete removal of everything Christmas would leave a barren landscape, the only way to bring December observances to a level playing field is to remove Christmas conceptually (masking it's identity with the generic term). This ends up infusing a generic feel to all of December. It's getting harder to care about what might otherwise have been more distinct differences between one observance and the next. I see it as a general meltdown into an increasingly bland holiday gruel served up every December with the generic salutation "Happy Holidays."

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