Chill out, folks; there's no need to be so defensive about Christmas
It isn't even the most important Christian holiday
'Tis the season to be outraged. Fa la la la la. La la la la.
The season when otherwise normal human beings find themselves caught up in vicious online arguments over the most insignificant of holiday traditions.
This year, Baby, It's Cold Outside was taken off playlists on some CBC digital audio channels, only to be reinstated after public outcry.
An opinion piece on CBC Newfoundland and Labrador suggesting that Canada could benefit from introducing a few non-Christian public holidays was met with calls for the Indian-Canadian writer to "go back where she came from."
This, of course, is on top of the usual debates over whether store clerks should say "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas," what seasonal displays (if any) should be allowed on public property, and whether Starbucks' Christmas cups are Christmassy enough.
In the face of all this controversy, I find myself sipping a cup of Yuletide cheer and wondering when North Americans got so defensive about Christmas.
Prominent and contentious
It isn't even the most important Christian holiday.
Surprised? It's not your fault. After all, Christmas is the holiday that gets the most public attention.
In most Christian denominations, though, Easter is the more important occasion by far. To believers, Easter commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus to redeem humanity's sins, which is the very basis of the Christian faith.
More time is devoted to Easter in the church calendar — the 12 days of Christmas are dwarfed by the 50 days of Easter — and it's at least two hundred years older than Christmas. Easter, in fact, was probably the very first Christian holiday.
So why has Christmas become the most prominent, and most contentious, Christian celebration?
Much of Christmas, as we know it, originated in Victorian England.
Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's German husband, is usually credited with introducing traditions like the Christmas tree to England, but it was a perfect storm of cultural and technological changes during the Victorian period that birthed our modern Christmas.
A new mass media, in the form of inexpensive daily newspapers, brought illustrations of the royal family's Christmas celebration into the homes of a growing middle class. In imitation of their queen, everyday people began decorating Christmas trees, too.
Looking at childhood in a new way
Meanwhile, shifting ideas about the role of children influenced the Victorian Christmas observance. Earlier generations of Britons had treated their children like miniature adults or like nuisances to be ignored. The Victorians, on the other hand, began to see childhood as a time to treasure.
Middle- and upper-class Victorians tried to preserve their children's innocence for as long as possible by shielding them from work and responsibility. Christmas became an occasion to cater to children by playing with them, giving them toys, and feeding them sweets.
The last factor that brought about the Christmas revolution was industrialization. As the nineteenth century wore on, factory production made manufactured goods more and more affordable, and sales of gifts and Christmas cards took off.
Commercialism, in other words, has been a part of the modern Christmas holiday since its Victorian beginnings. Even Dickens' classic tale, A Christmas Carol, embraces the commercial side of Christmas. A Christmas Carol's answer to grinding Victorian poverty isn't a radical reimagining of the social order; it's that wealthy men like Scrooge should simply spend more money on their employees, neighbours, and families.
By the 1950s and 1960s, some began to feel that Christmas commercialism had gone too far. Heartfelt movies like A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas implored their audiences to remember that Christmas "doesn't come from a store".
Feeling a secular threat
It would be another 40 years before conservative American pundits coined the phrase "war on Christmas." This time, the threat to the Christmas spirit wasn't commercialization – it was secularism.
In a 2004 episode of conservative cable talk show The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly declared: "All over the country, Christmas is taking flak. In Denver this past weekend, no religious floats were permitted in the holiday parade there. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled the 'holiday tree', and no Christian Christmas symbols are allowed in the public schools. Federated Department Stores — that's Macy's — have done away with the Christmas greeting Merry Christmas."
The Christmas season is a commercial juggernaut that careens from October through Boxing Day, reaching its frenzied peak on Black Friday.
It is this secular, commercial vision of the holiday that O'Reilly and the other crusaders in the War on Christmas are defending. The parade floats. The department store greetings. The giant spruce trees wrapped in LED lights.
In so doing, they've successfully swept concerns about commercialism under the rug. They've convinced many Christians to focus on what the cashier is saying to them while they're buying gifts, instead of asking whether they should be celebrating Christmas by buying so many gifts in the first place.
So the next time you feel defensive about Christmas, remind yourself that what you're defending isn't a 2,000-year-old religious observance but a set of 200-year-old customs that have been shaped by our commercial culture.
And ask yourself if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.
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