Ellen Goodman Misses the Point

In her December 8 column, syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman weighs in on the fight for Christmas. Not surprisingly, the liberal Ms Goodman thinks that the "holiday" treatment is just fine. I'd like to engage in a bit of fisking.

Goodman starts off with an anecdote about druids ending with

In short, the sacred and co-opted evergreens of the Druids have become the symbols of the purist Christmas Christians. Somebody hug a tree for me, here we go again.

First mistake - the Druids' sacred tree was the oak. She is thinking of mistletoe which was important to the Druids.

She continues:

There are a dwindling number of battling days until Christmas. The malls are filled with so much Christmas Muzak that we are all longing for a silent night. Nevertheless, we are again treated to the notion that Christmas is beleaguered and besieged and battered by the forces of diversity and secularism.

[...] On the one hand, the Christmas defense team is portraying its side as the overwhelming majority, the 90 percent who celebrate Christmas. On the other hand they are describing themselves as oppressed, indeed victimized.

[...] On the one hand they want more Christ in Christmas; on the other hand they want more Christmas in the marketplace. It makes one long for the screeds against commercialism.

She is deliberately missing the point here. The point is not to commercialize Christmas. The point is that refusing to even use the word "Christmas" is the ultimate commercialization. It is wringing everything out of the holiday except for the gift-giving.

Next she throws out a few red herrings:

The last real war against Christmas was, in fact, a religious war. It was waged in my hometown by Puritans who banned mince pies and plum puddings and declared that celebrating Christmas was a criminal offense. In 1711, Cotton Mather gave his famous lecture against ``mad mirth,'' ``long-eating,'' hard-drinking and reveling ``fit for not but a Saturn or Bacchus.''

As for American history, let us remember that Congress convened on the first Christmas of the new Republic, Dec. 25, 1789. Christmas wasn't a federal holiday until 1870.

Mince pies (but not plum puddings) were banned in England, not America. The Puritans controlled England during the 1640s and 50s. During that period they banned everything they disapproved of including Christmas, plays, and the Church of England. They also hung witches. Nothing that the Puritans did is relevant to the USA.

While it is true that Christmas was not declared a federal holiday until 1870, this is meaningless. In 1870, Congress passed the first federal law recognizing holidays. These were Christmas, New Years Day, the 4th of July, and Thanksgiving. Prior to 1870 there were no federal holidays, only state holidays.

I admit to being bemused with today's one-size-fits-all ``holiday'' season. How did the celebration of the birth of Christ elevate Hanukkah from minor to major league status?

But living in an extended family as well as a country that celebrates holidays that range from Hanukkah and Christmas to the Chinese New Year with stops along the way for Druidism, I also understand why ``holiday'' appears on everything from the president's greeting card -- with three pets frolicking in the snow -- to the office party. Conversely, one of the hallmarks of the culture wars is the way tolerance of diverse beliefs is reframed as intolerance for the majority.

And how many of those diverse groups celebrates their winter holiday by decorating a pine tree? Has any aspect of anyone else's religion been renamed for diversity?

But this year's blow-up over church and store? A battle between Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays? I thought religion was supposed to remind us that there's a separation between pew and marketplace

When did the separation between church and state become separation between church and retailer? No one is asking retailers to convert or to push religion and they are already pushing Christmas merchandise. They aren't calling it by its real name but that's what they are doing. Goodman is parroting the position of the ACLU - that religion should be confined to the home.

For a closing, Goodman goes on the attack:

If the religious right is worrying about the erosion of Christmas, maybe they should focus more on the megachurches around the country that colluded to close on Sunday, Dec. 25, for fear they wouldn't have enough customers. Christmas, they demurred, is a family day. Happy Familyday to you?

"Colluded?" That's a strange word and a misrepresentation of what is happening. By tradition, Christmas starts as sunset on December 24 which is why Christmas Eve is important in the first place. Anyone who goes to a Christmas Eve service would be going to church twice in one day.

Its not just the megachurches that decided to close on Christmas, either so this was a gratuitous attack on a group that Goodman apparently dislikes.

As a defender of the "Holidays", Goodman comes up short.