Christmas: 'tis the season for coercion

By Kate Mason

After countless months of shopping, caroling, and decorating, followed by one day of frantic gift-wrap tearing, the Christmas season has at last come to a blessed close. Malls are removing their "Merry Christmas" signs and halting their Christmas, after-Christmas, and way-way-way-after-Christmas sales. Public service announcements no longer carry politically correct "Happy Holidays" sentiments. Yale dining halls carted away their impressively ornate Christmas trees and lights sometime over vacation, along with the token menorahs and "Happy Kwanzaa" banners. I breathed my own sigh, thankful for having survived another four-month Christmas without going on a killing spree.

Christmas is the second most sacred holiday in the Christian religion, and it is also the most secularized. Its official purpose is to commemorate the birth of Christ, but any red-blooded American can tell you that Christmas has nothing to do with the manger and everything to do with frankincense and myrrh. It is not surprising, then, that classic responses to my lack of desire to participate in celebratory activities such as caroling and tree decorating include "lighten up," "don't you like presents?", and my all time favorite: "who cares if you're not Christian? Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus!"

Any discomfort that I, as an agnostic brought up in a Jewish home, may feel when confronted with expectations to sing "Silent Night" is written off as a silly and childish reaction. Any antagonism I might feel towards the nationwide disregard of the secular state is seen as sensitive and whiny. Yet, as much as we all take Christmas decorations and celebrations for granted even in our self-proclaimed multicultural university, Christmas is still a holiday associated with one particular religion.

Perhaps the most infuriating and frustrating basis for my cynicism lies in the complete naïveté of most Christians (and many non-Christians as well) regarding the significance of the holiday to the 75 percent of the world population that does not celebrate it. This phenomenon is better known as the "lonely Jew on Christmas" theory.

As parodied in the raucous comedy South Park, and exemplified by many of my own Christian friends, this idea is based on the assumption that anyone who is not celebrating Christmas has a deep and burning desire to do so. Anyone not participating in the festivities must be immediately snatched up and included by their caring and concerned Christian counterparts. Christmas stirs a missionary attitude--anyone who is different would be much happier if they were "one of us."

Another insulting and rather amusing manifestation of the "include everybody" obsession is the "Happy Holidays" fix. This is the quickest, most politically correct, and most widely accepted solution to the problem of the existence of Jews and other non-conformers. By neatly changing "Merry Christmas" messages to "Happy Holidays," and adding a big plastic menorah to the usual Christmas display, organizations can congratulate themselves on their sensitivity to other religions and complete their inundation of Christmas into the public sphere.

A few years ago, just to be safe, many groups even began throwing in "Happy Kwanzaa" messages, just to make sure that they were covering all of their bases. This would be fine and dandy provided that there were no Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, or atheists in America, that Hanukkah were a holiday of major significance, and that Kwanzaa were a religious holiday at all. Since none of these statements is true, the quick fix of the "holidays" is laughable.

Christmas is an upbeat, enjoyable holiday for many Americans. As citizens of this country, those people who do celebrate it certainly have a right to show their merriment. I enjoy looking at light displays on houses and ornamented trees in my friends' living rooms. Church-sponsored Christmas pageants, stories of Santa, and traditional Christmas Eve meals are all elements of the holiday that I not only endure but appreciate for their cultural importance and the happiness that they bring to my Christian friends. To those who chide me for my impatience with Christmas trees in the dining halls and the presence of Santa at the freshman "holiday dinner," I plead guilty to intolerance. But my proposal remains the same: celebrate Christmas. Just don't try to make me celebrate it.

Kate Mason is a freshman in Ezra Stiles.

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