Culture Wars - final entry for 2004.

What I've been labeling as Culture Wars is mainly the suppression of Christmas in favor of the secular "winter holiday". I want to take a final look at this.

First - yes, Christmas does have a religious connection. So do other widely celebrated holidays: Easter, Valentine's Day, and Halloween. Easter is the most religious of these since the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ are the central parts of Christianity. However, Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are pagan and are as much a part of Easter as the religious portion.

Easter is not officially recognized any longer however, the secular spring break that schools take just happens to coincide with Easter. A strange coincidence since Easter is the most mobile holiday.

Valetine's day gets the least official notice. I don't know of anyone that gets it off. The religious aspects are lost, also. I don't know if the Catholics still celebrate Saint Valentine and no one else ever did.

Halloween is interesting. Also know as All Hallows Eve, it is the night before All Saints Day which is still celebrated by Catholics. No one gets Halloween off but there are government-sponsored activities.

Christmas has taken many forms. It may celebrate the birth of Christ but nearly all of it is pagan or secular. The date comes from the Roman Saturnalia. This was a 12 day festival. The early Christians were flexible and incorporated many pagan festivals and traditions into Christianity. The 12 days of Satunalia became the birth of Christ and the time it took for the wise men to find him.

Other winter solstice activities were added - things like holly and miseltoe and the Yule log.

In the 1640, the Puritans took over the English government. They decided that Christmas was too Catholic and too pagan for their tastes and the banned it.

When Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, Christmas was celebrated much like today's Thanksgiving without the football. People got a day off and had a feast - turkey if they could afford it and goose if they could not.

In America, it wasn't even a holiday. It was most often celebrated by wassaling - going from house to house in search of spiked punch.

Nearly everything that we think of as Christmas was added or invented in the last 200 years.

One aspect of this was the religious one. By the end of the 19th century, people thought that they should do something religious for Christmas but the Catholics were the only ones who recognized it as a religious occasion. Protestants started going to Christmas mass in large numbers. The protestant churches started opening on Christmas eve because of the competition.

This was never the main point of Christmas in America, though.

Today, much of our economy depends on Christmas. Cities started putting up Christmas trees and decorations to attract people downtown and help the merchants.

And that's where the culture wars start. Wishing someone a Merry Christmas should not be an insult even if that person isn't Christian. Anyone who is offended by this is looking for an excuse to be offended. Christmas has too much non-Christian baggage. Yes, a nativity scene on public property is probably going too far but renaming the lighted tree is overcompensating.

Then there are the merchants. Macy's shouldn't pretend that Hanukkah and Kwanza keeps them in business. They are selling Christmas gifts. Go ahead and admit it.

Christmas doesn't threaten non-Christian countries. The Japanese cooking show Iron Chef filmed some Christmas episodes with the set decorated with pointsettias and other Christmas items. This from a country where Christianity is a tiny percentage of the population.

All of this counts as culture wars because some elements of our society feel that they have to suppress the majority in case it might make the minorities feel bad. This is the same group that is against teaching English to immigrants.

They are also offended by outward displays of patriotism.

You can embrace American culture or you can be ashamed of it. I prefer to embrace it.