There’s a new fad that I noticed more, now that I moved to Texas: “KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS”.
While I’m all for expressing one’s faith and beliefs, there’s an air of hypocritical assholery that accompanies these magnets and stickers, plastered to the back of the SUVs I see.

From what I can tell, there are two distinct camps of people that buy these magnets/stickers:
- Those that believe ‘Merry Christmas’ should be all anyone says, rather than ‘Happy Holidays’ (thanks Bill O’Reilly!)
- Those that believe there is a detachment from the purpose of the holiday and Jesus needs to be more of the focus again.

So let’s discuss the two, shall we?

In the 2000-2009 decade, we saw a huge increase in the amount of political correctness, from how we referred to fat people as ‘obese’ to how we referred to midgets as ‘little people’. In that effort to make everyone happy and not to offend anyone, the ‘Happy Holidays’ slogan was used more and more in America. Now, you can claim it was part of Liberal media agenda like Limbaugh and O’Reilly have, but it simply comes down to the fact that holidays of 3 faiths all happen to hit in December: Chanukah, Christmas and Kwanzaa.
According to a 2007 survey, 78% of Americans are Christian or of a Jesus-based faith(1) , but that still means that there are 20 million Americans that are NOT Christian or do NOT engage in Christian holidays/celebration (myself included). Many of us non-Christians have come to accept we are in a Christian-majority nation and thusly don’t expect anything less than the persistent in-your-face promotion of that faith, so I and others were a tad surprised when people started to contend we were offended by the preponderance of the use of ‘Merry Christmas’. Frankly, I found the idea to be a tad silly, since Jews like myself are simply used to it and for those of us that grew up in non-Jewish neighborhoods, we had the ‘Chanukah Bush’ and Chanukah Harry gave us some presents on 12/25; there was no religious attachment to the day, it was just a day for our family to be together, eat Chinese food the night before, exchange presents the day of and usually go skiing or something.
An interesting thing happened; this year, it seems to be OK to say “Merry Christmas” again, as every commercial from Target to Walmart has the slogan, so it would seem the ‘Keep Christ In Christmas’ is the last horse to cross the finish line, as ‘Christ’ is very much back in Christmas.

But there’s a more fundamental issue I take with this movement and the underlying persecution complex they exude, one that speaks to the larger hypocritical nature of most Christians and their holier-than-thou attitudes: the people donning these stickers and magnets are the same ones filling their vehicles full of presents and engaging in the promotion of consumerism.
If Christmas is such a holy and sacred of a day, I fail to see how many in the faith communities can speak of that holiness out of one side of their mouth, while promoting the commercial and consumer acquisition of goods out of the other. The irony also lies in that the tree and presents Christians have adopted as their own for this day are of Pagan nature; is that how you honor the birth of your Lord, whom, by the way was actually born in May or June?(2) I suppose it’s hard for many of us non-Christians to understand how the consumer aspect, which is what was affected most by the ‘Happy Holidays’ movement, is the focus of your attention and angst, when those Pagan rituals and consumerism are antithetical to your faith.

I propose that anyone whom wishes to don the ‘Keep Christ In Christmas’ sticker or magnet should also cease giving presents on 12/25, not decorate with a tree and only honor the religious aspect of the holiday. When you claim that the day is sacred and holy and deserves reverence, you cannot also claim that the pagan rituals of tree and gift giving are a part of that. While I certainly agree that the Christmas as we know it today is nothing like it may have been 1,000 years ago, I think the pandering of media pundits and Christian leadership need to realize that their warpath for this specialized identity is unnecessary and hypocritical.
I know I’ve used this quote before, Jon Stewart’s statement seems to ring true when referring about this crybaby movement:

Does anyone know…does the Christian persecution complex have an expiration date? Because… uh… you’ve all been in charge pretty much since… uh… what was that guy’s name… Constantine. He converted in, what was it, 312 A.D. I’m just saying, enjoy your success

Sources:
1- “Religious Composition of the U.S.” http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/affiliations-all-traditions.pdf
2- Snopes.com: http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/jesus.asp

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