The Holiday Season.
It's a descriptive name, covering an increasingly wide expanse of holidays that began simply as Christmas and now includes all possible holidays of any faith (religious or secular) from Hallowe'en to New Year's Day—as long as they can be contorted to include a ritual of spending lots of money.
But it's an awkward moniker, and offensive to Christians, who are understandably miffed at having the Christmas (literally, "Christ's mass") season (technically, December 25 - January 5, unless you're Orthodox) steamrollered by beliefs, attitudes, and practices that are decidedly un-Christian in nature. Thus the season of "peace on earth, goodwill towards men" and "tidings of comfort and joy"—taken completely out of context, of course—is also beset with the annual (and impossible) admonition to "keep Christ in (secular) Christmas," along with fighting over whether "Happy Holidays" is an acceptable greeting, and where and how Nativity scenes may be displayed.
Therefore I'm going to put forth a modest proposal:
- That Christians should freely accept that we are strangers in a strange land, and following God's instructions to the Jewish exiles in Babylon, "seek the peace and prosperity" of our country without expecting lip service to our faith from those who don't even remember, let alone follow it. If I choose not to patronize an institution, it will be for a better reason than that an over-worked sales clerk wished me "Happy Holidays."
- That the secular world should freely acknowledge that Christmas belongs to Christians, and choose a name for the Holiday Season that more accurately reflects the meaning, purpose, and deity of this time of year in a decidedly secular and materialistic society.* Acknowledging both the Ancient Roman holiday of mid-to-late December, the name of which is now synonymous with excess, self-indulgence, and licentiousness, and the patron-demon of hyper-consumption, I propose that this new American holidy be called,
Mammonalia
I know better than to think that I'm the first to coin this word, but a Google search pulls up surprisingly few references, so I can safely say, you read it here first.
I've been telling my kids the feast of St. Nicholas is the 6th, and look at all these silly people who haven't checked their calendars and continue to parade St. Nick around well past his feast day.
I'd be happy with the name change for the secular holiday. Let's call a spade a spade.
Nice! How do your neighbors and your children's friends celebrate?
When my husband's family lived in the Netherlands, Santa came to them on Sinterklaas Dag (December 5/6) because that's when he came to their Dutch neighbors. But boy did they get flack from their fellow expat Americans who then had to explain to their own kids why Santa didn't come to them until December 24/25!
I understand the sentiment, but I'm afraid I'm not a fan of the procedure you propose. That the new festival name sounds like a biological class is a minor problem; the main problem in my opinion is that by claiming Christmas for Christians alone we exclude all others from the benefits historical Christianity has brought them. You can argue they've rejected their birthright, and I'd have to agree in principle, but so many vestiges remain that burning the bridge and demolishing the bridgehead seems neither charitable nor wise to me.
Or look at it differently. I think most readers who aren't Christians will object that they don't like the commercialism either, and that they do appreciate the spirit of giving (the meaning of Christmas according to the Berenstain Bears) or the family time or the hope of world peace. Try this: poll your facebook friends on whether they think Christmas is too commercialized - and watch the atheist responses roll in. Tarring all who aren't Christians with the same brush does us a disservice, I'm afraid.
