Christmas Divided
With holidayization, removing Christ from the public arena works hand in hand with the multi-cultural plan of subdividing December. Christmas is recast as a holiday split in two (private religious Christmas, and public Christmas-turned-into-"Holiday"). According to the plan, equal attention is supposed to be paid to all the holidays that are thought to be crowded together at the end of the year. Religious Christmas qualifies as a downsized holiday in this plan and is expected to to fit into one of the multi-cultural compartments alongside subcultural and ethnic Hanukkah and Kawanzaa. But the public half of Christmas is stripped of it's name and identity.
By itself, removing the nativity from public sight isn't necessarily the worst thing that could happen to Christmas. It's true we don't get to see the nativity in store windows, and the nativity is a mysterious, peaceful and beautiful thing. But if there's a notion that someone might feel marginalized or offended by it, if it takes dualizing Christmas and screening off the religious part to keep people quiet, then so be it. I do think the number of people offended by religion is distorted in the public's mind, but regardless, few are defying the prohibition of it. The problem here is that Christmas faces a dual disservice. Proponents of holidayization forget or understate the fact that Christmas, for the intents and purposes of public exposure today, already amounts to Christmas, not in it's entirety, but only to the secular part. This innocuous part that remains in public is what all the fuss is about. |
 |
It's ironic, since Christ is removed from Christmas, that now is the time for very persnickety attitudes about religion. Never before has Christ been made so invisible and at the same time, Christmas been so defined as religion. This is a misconception and mistreatment of Christmas. It's unreasonable and intolerant. Emphasizing Christmas as not just a religious phenomenon, but a political and cultural phenomenon as well, could be a boon for the holiday now. The role Christ will play in Christmas will be contested regardless, as it always has been. It doesn't need to be the pivotal point at a time when the survival of the entire public observance of Christmas is the real issue. For proponents of holidayization there's still a concern, even after all that Christmas has endured, that there's isn't a guarantee no one will ever feel marginalized or offended by "the C word". Christmas, the secular part, is still at large as a national holiday, and out there is a giant dismembered chunk of it that will rear it's head every December in a very public way. The chunk is now labeled "Holiday". Another way to illustrate what's happened to Christmas is to imagine that it's the big elephant in the zoo that some well intentioned person worried about when word got out that it wasn't someone's favorite. It seems it was just too large. Word of this concern spread, and for a while they pretended the elephant wasn't there. But this was hard for some of them to do. They pretended that elephants aren't the largest land animals, that there are other animals more or less the same size. They thought if the elephant could be made smaller there would be more room for other kinds of animals. So they succeeded in an operation to divide the animal into two parts, the part that was deemed more controversial reserved for private viewing by special interest groups. But they still weren't quite satisfied. The part that was left on public display needed further alteration. The "elephant" name on the cage could possibly offend somebody, so it was decided it should be called something non-specific, like "Africanimal" or "Indianimal". There was hope that the real name would eventually be forgotten.
By birthright, Christmas is a popular, public celebration. It is unsuited to be treated otherwise.There is no precedence for it being split, with the nativity being shielded and treated as an exclusive, private observance while the public part is shielded by being called a generic name. The slogan should now be "Keep Christmas out in the open".