If this were a politically correct blog (which it is not), I’d probably never use the word “Christmas”. As it is, this word is well on its way to being forever sealed in the “forbidden words vault” (grudging h/t to cartoonist Berkeley Breathed who spawned this idea in an ancient Bloom County comic) where all sorts of infamous and politically incorrect words ultimately find themselves.

As it is, “Merry Christmas” has all but disappeared from the lexicon of holiday names used by advertisers and greeting card companies, replaced with the sterile and completely neutral “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings”, along with some more (feeble) attempts at humouring this with a hash-word like “Happy Merry Christmakwanzakah”.

Which of course, offends the Asatru Pagans - because Yule gets left out of the mix. And Eid-al-Fitr moves around the calendar with the conclusion of Ramadan (based upon the lunar calendar). It gets an honourable mention only because it happened near the “Winter Holiday Season” a few years back.

And nevermind billions of Chinese and southeast Asians whose new year also moves on a different calendar, as well as Greek (and other Eastern) Orthodoxy which keeps its Christmas on January 6th.

Tsk, tsk. Try as we might, we just can’t make everyone happy.

And atheists disparage any sort of nonsensical holidaying about during the winter, at least in any religion-based sense. Under an atheistic regime, the best one could hope for would be a New Year’s day (strictly secular, of course) and maybe some sort of politically correct “diversity day” to offset the vaccuum left by vacating any incarnation of religion on December 25th.

Atheists will be the first to point out that December 25th was not originally a Christian holiday. To a point, this is quite true - and I will agree with the person who (rightly) claims that the 12/15 observance was a Papist construction in the very earliest days of the Church, when much of Europe was still under various pagan gods and goddesses. Most likely, Jesus of Nazareth was born in the late spring, ca. 4~7 BC. (Flabbling over the exact year and day Jesus was born goes beyond the scope of revealed Scripture and well beyond this post; I’ll go with consensus thought here).

Most of these pagan religions of that era observed some sort of major celebration during the winter solstice week. (December 21-28, roughly) and were not particularly connected with the modern observance of the New Year (most nations of that era tracked the New Year along the Roman model, turning the year in March).

What better way for the early church to warm people up to the idea of the Saviour’s birth? Pick a day right smack in the middle of the Solstice Holidays… of course, this substitution took a while to catch on, but catch on it did.

Barring any extremely unlikely, but somehow widely popular move to change Christmas (or at least its proper context of a Christ-centered holy day) from December 25 to some other day, probably in late Spring) … I don’t see why Christians should be cowed into giving up the season’s identity with the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, for the next time someone says “Happy Holidays” or something similar to that, return their greeting to them in the Name of our Lord - “Merry Christmas” right on back.

And now, do excuse me while I locate my Christmas decorations and trimmings to pretty up the place.