Have you heard there’s a war on Christmas? Throughout the western world, godless multiculturalists are trying to brainwash us all to celebrate “the holidays” and to send each other “season’s greetings.”
Nonsense. Even a cursory survey of the news demonstrates that Christmas is quite alive and well and living in soft-news articles about angry religious people decrying secularism. Fox News and many Christian news outlets-let us charitably assume, for the moment, that they are separable-are chronicling anti-Christmas initiatives from sea to shining sea: Hardware stores selling “holiday trees,” greeting cards labeled as “December 25th Cards,” and other examples, large and small, of lapses in sectarian righteousness, all for the angst-o-tainment of conservative Christians.
Canada, although less consumed by such battles, still saw several brief blowups, including a spat over what the tree at the Governor General’s Rideau Hall is called (they settled on “Christmas tree,” by the way).
Canada is a multicultural, officially secular country. Although Canada’s heritage has its roots in Anglo-Saxon Christian Europe, it is a much richer and varied nation today, the most multicultural country on Earth, and home to growing numbers of immigrants from wildly different backgrounds. It’s time to acknowledge that Christmas’s privileged place in the pantheon of holy days celebrated by Canadians is fading away. We should let that happen gracefully.
The Canadian government takes a “winter break,” as does U of T. We wish each other “happy holidays” and send cards with “season’s greetings” on them. Most Canadians do this because they have non-Christian friends and neighbours, not because they have been lobotomized by the ACLU.
“Happy holidays” is a friendly and mutually acceptable way to extend goodwill to the people around us without making unwarranted cultural assumptions. Manners, one of the great totems of modern Canadianness, aren’t just a bunch of pointless rituals; manners are about making other people feel comfortable around you, and that means not putting them in the awkward position of having them say “Uh, dude, I’m Jewish” when you wish them a Merry Christmas. That’s not political correctness-it’s just polite.
As Canada becomes less white, less European-descended, less Christian, Christmas is inevitably going to become only one of a range of holy days that are important to a large segment of the population. A truly representative government, or a truly inclusive institution like U of T, just can’t privilege a Christian holiday-no matter how beloved-over another.
The shift is not about belittling Christianity, no matter how loud Fox News shrieks: it’s about acknowledging and celebrating our shared humanity, about loving each other and the remarkable community we’ve built together in Canada. That’s why we at The Varsity-whose staff and volunteers come from every faith and walk of life, and proud of it, damn it-wish you Happy Holidays.
