Archbishop Chaput of Denver, a guy that strikes me as the coolest episcopos since Fulton Sheen, has suggested that Christians stop using the phrase "Happy Holidays".
"We don't celebrate a generic excuse for gift-giving. We celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ."
Elijah, a fellow who posts to a Yahoo group I belong to, shares Chaput's dissatisfaction
In the United States, those of us who celebrate Christmas get constantly hit with a barrage of "Happy Holidays" which some businesses claim is about diversity, but is mostly a "Commercial Slogan".
I don't begrudge the Jews Haunakah or the African Americans Qwanzaa. However, saying Happy Holidays disses Haunakah and Qwanzaa as much as Christmas.
The truth is that its an attempt to take Christ out of Christmas and he's really the reason for this Season. The only reason for peace and goodwill is that Christ was born. Take that away and its out of control spending and stress run amuck.
I struggle with how I deal with this issue. My pastor's wife will tell people who tell her Happy Holidays, "NO THANK YOU. Merry Christmas to you." My pastor will just say loudly, "MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR."
At my workplace, such a response out of the question. I usually don't even acknowledge a "Happy Holidays" and will never dare use the term with a customer. However, my workplace is ultra-PC, they're into diversity big time. They have a big tree downstairs for you to take tags and buy presents (Christmas Presents I guess) and they call it "The HOLIDAY Tree" while referring properly to the Menorah as such and not just the "Holiday Candlestick".
The LDS people at work think its absurd and one of them mocks it but carefully as to not get into trouble. What do you think?
I'm all for dropping "Happy Holidays" (except for when I'm singing Andy Williams songs 
). While we're
at it, we need to purge "Merry Christmas", "Happy Easter", and
a few others.
If Christians are to regain their identity in society - be in this world but not of it - we need to understand what we celebrate and why. "Merry" implies partying and perhaps debauchery to me (as in "eat, drink, and be merry"), not celebration of the birth of the Word Made Flesh. "Easter" is derived from a pagan fertility goddess' name. Perhaps we should take inspiration from other languages and use phrases that mean something like "Happy Nativity" and "Joyous Pasch".
Leave a comment with your thoughts and suggestions.
Funky Dung
Comments 7
I don't think of debauchery when I think of being "merry"–Dickens, who popularized the term, probably did not have such a connotation in mind either when he used the phrase in "A Christmas Carol". Even if Dickens, though, was a drunken hedonist, I don't think of that when I wish someone a merry Christmas.
Likewise, while I know of the pagan Anglo-Saxon roots of the term "Easter", that is the English word for the greatest day in history. Divorcing that word from its Christian meaning and using some foreign term like "Pascha", however "theologically correct" it may be to some purists, would just make the real meaning of Easter more remote than it already is, and we'd just make American culture more secular and alienated from Christianity by up and performing major surgery on our language.
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Posted 13 Dec 2004 at 3:08 am ¶I'm with you Jerry. I think Funky is being just a bit uptight….
Cheers!
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Posted 13 Dec 2004 at 7:31 pm ¶"When the early church converted the pagan populations of the West, to make the new creed intelligible and congenial, Christian rites and holidays were adapted to existing customs. Saints took the place of local deities; Christmas, Easter, Rogations (the springtime blessing of the fields) re-enacted the original pagan festivals. Hence the Puritan hostility to Christmas, forbidden by law for 22 years in 17th-century Massachusetts and, in our day, by the Truth Tabernacle in South Carolina (125 members), who hanged Santa Clause in 1982 to make the point clear." — Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, p. 22.
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Posted 14 Dec 2004 at 1:35 pm ¶http://bizzbangbuzz.blogspot.com/2004/12/happy-holidays-bah-humbug.html
I too am a "Happy Holidays" opponent as explained in the above post.
On a more joyous note, you may wish to read this story by pearl buck by following this link
http://bizzbangbuzz.blogspot.com/2004/12/christmas-day-in-morning-by-pearl-s.html
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Posted 15 Dec 2004 at 6:31 pm ¶Anthony,
Thanks for the comment.
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Posted 15 Dec 2004 at 8:05 pm ¶I found it from a mention on pittsburghbloggers.com
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Posted 15 Dec 2004 at 10:04 pm ¶They have a great thing going over there, don't they?
I read Advent Offers Opportunity for Reflection and I think you'd like Discovering a Season.
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Posted 15 Dec 2004 at 10:25 pm ¶Post a Comment