How is it that with decorations in the stores since October, I can suddenly be surprised that Christmas is less than two weeks away. How did we get from -- still a long way off - to almost here -- so quickly?
Ah well. Never mind. There's something else on my mind. A lot of people have big objections to the term "Happy Holidays" over "Merry Christmas". And I must say, when our newspapers last year put "Happy Holidays" as the banner headline on December 25, I found it annoying. It seems in a case like that (since it wasn't any other holiday) they could really have said Merry Christmas. And "Holiday Trees" is silly, as are "Holiday stockings". But those examples, while real ones, are extreme.
What people really object to is the way that the term "Christmas" is being shoved aside - pushed under the Politically Correct carpet as it were. We don't want our holiday marginalized. But I think we need to be careful what we wish for.
A Holiday Catalogue or a Christmas Catalogue? Well, they want us to buy Christmas gifts right? So shouldn't it be a Christmas Catalogue? Ah - but at the same time don't people fret that the meaning of Christmas is being shoved aside - being handed over to commercial interests? Do we really need more consumer goods and sales associated with Christmas?
Maybe we should let the sales and catalogues be for the "Holidays" - whatever they may be and let Christmas take on a meaning that is a little deeper. Maybe when people talk about Christmas it will evoke images of a stable in Bethlehem and angels and a star and a baby, instead of images of Santa and iPods and HDTVs and Wiis and whatever else people hope to find beneath their tree this year.
Yes - keep Christmas Christmas - by all means. But maybe if their are aspects of the season that don't seem to fit with the miraculous nature of the nativity - maybe we can turn those over to the "Holiday Season". Just a thought.
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