No ho ho

"I don't really miss God, but I sure miss Santa Claus."

~ from the song “Gutless” by Hole.

There is no war on Christmas. Oh there may be a limited police action, sure, but Christmas started it. Christmas invaded Poland. Christmas fired on Fort Sumter. Christmas crossed the 38^th parallel. Christmas assassinated Franz Ferdinand. (The Archduke, not the band.) Use whatever metaphor or analogy you prefer. The point is that the non-Christians of the world did not start the conflict with Christmas. We're just fighting back.

Some Christians are offended by seasonal greetings such as “happy xmas,” “happy holidays,” and, um, “season's greetings.” They complain that you can't say “Merry Christmas” any more. But they are wrong. Go ahead and wish your fellow Christians “Merry Christmas.” Do you hear any complaining? I just hear those sleigh bells jingling. A ring-ting-tingling too. Angels are getting their wings and dogs are salivating. But nobody is complaining.

There's nothing wrong with one Christian saying “Merry Christmas” to another Christian, and nobody anywhere has ever tried to stop this from occurring. The problem is that many Christians seem to assume that everyone else is a Christian too, and we're not. I am not a Christian. Nor am I a Muslim. I believe that both of those ideologies have brought great harm to the world. I also happen to believe that most Christians and most Muslims throughout the world are themselves good and decent human beings, albeit regrettably deluded.

The problem with the phrase “Merry Christmas” is that Christians routinely say it to non-Christians and don't see anything wrong with it. And I wonder how many of them would be annoyed if you wished them a happy Ramadan. Go ahead and try it, preferably deep in the bible belt. See if they wish the peace and joy of the season upon you. If you are religious, you might want to pray first.

Just about every religion in the world has some type of winter holiday, and whether they know it or not, it all goes back to traditions that started thousands of years ago, long before Islam or Christianity existed. Because when winter comes, everything dies, and the days get shorter and shorter, and it’s all so dreary, grim and depressing, so people needed to put some type of end-of-the-year festival in place to keep their spirits up. The specific mythology that people are celebrating is irrelevant. The point is that it’s cold outside, and it’s going to be a long nasty winter, but we’re all still alive, damn it. Throw another log on the fire, we’re still alive.

The basic human desire to celebrate at this time of year is deep and universal, and individual tales about various magical stuff happening centuries ago are not. I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, nor the prophetic status of Mohammed any more than I believe in Santa Claus, and I’m continually amazed that grown adults, who have long since realized that old Saint Nick was just a fiction created by other people to control their behavior, don’t realize the same thing about Yahweh, Jehovah, and Allah.

But that’s just me. If you believe that Jesus was the son of God, sent to Earth to save us all, because his dad would never let us in the door unless we killed his boy, then that’s okay. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me, but I respect your right to believe that, and to wish a Merry Christmas to each other. If you believe one of the other popular legends about things that I consider to be no more credible than the Santa Claus story, the same goes for you. And I truly and sincerely wish the peace and joy of the season upon you.

But I don’t know which one of the stories you believe in. That’s why I’m not wishing anyone a merry Christmas, Chanukah, Solstice, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, or anything else. Not specifically. That’s why I say “Happy holidays.” What this means is happy [insert your specific winter holiday here].

If you know someone else is a Christian, then go ahead and wish them a merry Christmas. If you really don’t know, or know for a fact that they aren’t, don’t assume that they are, or ignore the fact that they are not, because that’s disrespectful to them and their beliefs (or, in my case, militant lack thereof.)

I hope that everyone has a happy and healthy holiday season. And I hope that Santa brings you everything you wanted. I asked for worldwide enlightenment, whereby the people of the world discard primitive superstitions that squelch reason and rationality and have caused so much bloodshed over the centuries. I’m probably not going to get it. Santa is just a myth that people made up to control the behavior of other human beings, after all.

Happy holidays!