It seems Christmas has become thoroughly.. multicultural. The debate over whether one should say "happy holidays" or not should finally come to an end. One should have no more difficulty saying "Merry Christmas" than Happy Thursday or Merry Wednesday, though hopefully with a greater twinkle in the eye.
A friendly detractor may say, yes but hasn't Christmas always been multicultural? To this I must agree, but add that it was multicultural in a different kind of way. Christmas has always been multicultural precisely because Christians have always been multicultural. The multiculturalism I speak of today is different. Now not only Christians celebrate Christmas, but non-Christians too, and these in far greater numbers than ever before. It has led to the now common sighting of the little white and red signs in front of people's houses or on their cars which say "Keep Christ in Christmas". There would be no need to make such declarations unless already Christmas was seen as existing outside the circle of Christianity. How odd this is considering "Christ" is already in Christmas, literally forming part of the word.
This marks a transition I have perhaps not so subtly referred to above when I use the greetings "Happy Thursday" and "Merry Wednesday". For some time now these words have lost their religious connotations for us, except for a very few pagans perhaps. Wednesday of course was named for the Norse god Odin or the Saxon Wodan, the All-Father. Thursday was named for one of his sons, the god of thunder Thor: Wodan's-day and Thor's-day respectively. We may greet one another quite cheerfully with a "happy Thursday" and think nothing of it. There are many cultural/religious artifacts that we use in this way. So the term "Christmas" has slipped toward this usage, demonstrated by the insistence of Christians that we keep the "Christ" in Christmas, as a kind of resistance to the transition that is already taking place.
The insistence in so many schools that we refrain from saying "Merry Christmas" or have Christmas concerts is a sign therefore of a number of things. First, interestingly it is a sign that schools are colluding with Christians to keep Christmas a religious holiday (and thus not a celebration appropriate for all their students), this despite the availability of a number of Christmas symbols that are capable of carrying both religious and secular meaning almost entirely in either direction. Think of Santa Claus, the Christmas tree, gift-giving... all of these can be thought of in terms completely unrelated to the Advent of Christ, and in fact are thought of this way by many many people. Following this point, schools themselves therefore restrict our freedom to define Christmas in whatever way we choose, already naming for us the meaning of Christmas (i.e. it has religious meaning). This is similar to arguing that Santa Claus can only be white or Canadian etc., failing to take into account the symbolic givenness of the season and the signs of its presence. Christmas, unchained from a specific cultural interpretation, becomes not devoid of meaning, but free in its openness to us. Instead of shying away from its celebration in schools, now may be the time to ask each beautiful little child what it means to them and their families. It is precisely in that chorus of small voices that we might hear the melody and meaning of Christmas emerge.
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