Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Witnessing?


Someone asked me Sunday if I was going to blog about the “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas” annual dust up.  I hadn’t planned to, but the more I thought about it, I decided to give my “for what it’s worth” opinion.  Here goes.
For a long time, many Christians have bemoaned the growing secularization of Christmas. Frustrated by this secularization, a slogan was developed by some crafty person that is rolled out each year about this time that pertains to remembering “the reason for the season.”  The purpose of repeating the slogan seems to be to remind one and all that the “reason” is the celebration of Jesus’ birth.
Certainly, persons of a certain age can remember when no one had to be reminded, but I think two things have happened since then. The first was the slow, but very real shift in the importance the populace places on church-going in particular and Christianity in general. The second is a cultural shift that is generally called “political correctness.”   Let me begin with a comment about the first one. In 2009, an American Religious Identification Survey was conducted by the Institue for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture.  According to that survey:
  • Fifteen percent (15%) of Americans overall say they have no religion, up from 8% in 1990.
  • Forty-six percent (46%) of Americans between the ages of 18-43 indicate they have no religion.
  • Catholics, Baptists (the perennial powerhouse of growth in numbers) and other mainline Protestant groups all report large drops in membership in the last couple of decades.  At the same time Islam, Wicca and eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddism showed gains.
  • The number of people who identify themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased four-fold from 1990 to 2009, from about one million to 3.6 million. [Contrast this with the number of Episcopalians in the US: 2,006,343 in 2009.]

Since many folks don’t really care if Jesus was born, wishing them Merry Christmas seems a little off the mark.  Happy Holidays is a much better fit, right?
And now a word about the second shift. Those same people of a certain age I mentioned earlier grew up at a time when no one had to be reminded of the reason for the season.  That’s not to say there was no secular element to the season.  Santa was the department stores and shopping still took a lot of time and money, if less than is devoted to it today. “The Bishop’s Wife” was a heart-warming movie that was only marginally a Christmas movie, but the bishop’s sermon with which the movie ends, certainly invokes the Christian message. We can contrast this to the much more popular “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph” which have nothing to do with the Christmas message. So though secularization was creeping in, those persons almost universally greeted each other with “Merry Christmas!” 
So how important is it now?  Well, the move away from this clearly religious greeting was fueled largely by the need to not offend those who don’t celebrate Christmas as a religious holy day--as we’ve seen, a growing number.  It fits right into the growing political correctness in which we mustn’t do anything that might offend another or cause them discomfort. Perhaps as Christians, we need to give up our need to remind people of the reason for the season and go with the jolly and well-intended “Happy Holidays.”  No downside risk and everybody feels good about December.
Or perhaps not.  Here's my plan; feel free to adopt or discard it as you wish. You greet me with Happy Holidays and I’ll reply with Merry Christmas.  If you say nothing to me, I’ll still say Merry Christmas.  Why?  Because like it or not, this season is about Jesus, not Frosty, not Rudolph, and not Santa and I feel some obligation to be a witness to that, especially in an increasely secular world.  I really do regret any offense you might take from my greeting, but tens of thousands of Christians have died because they proclaimed their witness.  Since we’ve all been called to be witnesses, even to death, I think I can handle it if I get a little scowl from you.  After all witnessing can be a b..uh, hard to do, but if I don’t do it, who will?
Merry Christmas! Jerry

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