Try as I might, I just can't wrap my brain around it. Every year, I'm left scratching my head over this vague "they're destroying Christmas" notion that starts to float around.
Never mind that no one seems to know quite who "they" are, but trust me, "they" are out to ruin everything.
Sometimes "they" are the media - that's me, incidentally - by our perceived refusal to use the word "Christmas" (interestingly enough, we've also had people point out how often we use the word "Christmas").
Sometimes, "they" are public bodies who incite a firestorm by hosting a "holiday pageant" or removing nativity scenes from a city hall.
Oh, the political correctness! Oh, the destruction of timehonoured traditions! Pity our future generations who will be left empty-handed, devoid of anything of value at this time of year! Oh, sigh.
The last few seasons, it's become a theme on Facebook around this time of year, with pseudo-political status updates that use a lot of capped letters and suggest that people who "agree" should pass it on. You know the ones I'm talking about: the old "I am celebrating Christmas, not the holiday season; I will wish you Merry Christmas, not season's greetings" and so on.
With all due respect: get your knickers untwisted, take a deep breath and calm down.
At my house, we do, in fact, celebrate Christmas - probably the most popular version of Christmas in Canada in this day and age: the one that mixes modern secular traditions (like a tree and letters to Santa) with those rooted in the Christian tradition (like a decorative nativity scene and angels on the tree).
Like many people from my generation, I grew up in a churchgoing home, but we were intermittent at best (we'd qualify as the classic Easterand Christmas crowd with occasional bouts of steadfast attendance.)
As an adult, I'm what you'd call "undecided" about church, but I nonetheless enjoy the Christian narrative around Christmas and what its message means to me.
All in all, I'm a big fan of the season, and it is, in fundamental ways, extremely important to me. But there's the rub: it's important to me.
And I make no assumptions - or expectations - about what's important to others.
When it comes down to this big question of whether it's the holiday season, or whether it's Christmas, I can only ask this: what do you celebrate in your home during December and January?
Is it Christmas, either secular or religious? Then hurray for Christmas! Is it Hanukkah? Yay for eight nights of fun! Is it Kwanzaa, or the winter solstice, or yule, or (depending on the year) Diwali, Chinese New Year or Muslim New Year?
Enjoy it!
But when it comes to what happens in public, tax-funded environments (like your kid's school, or at city hall or federal buildings), the time for assuming that everyone has the same values is long gone.
If debating over the use of the word "holidays" was somehow going to solve critical issues, like world hunger, or child poverty, I'd be the first to battle it out.
But it won't. And the answer, ultimately, is what it means to you - and you alone. So enjoy your holiday, whatever it is, and stop worrying so much about what everyone else is doing.
Christina Myers is a reporter with the Burnaby NOW.
