Have a Merry Christmas!

“Merry Christmas!”

“Season’s Greetings!”

“Happy Holidays!”

“Joyeux Noel!”

“Frohe Weinachten!”

“Feliz Navidad!”

Take your pick! All kinds of traditions bring a different nostalgic greeting to mind. I grew up with ‘Merry Christmas’ and occasionally the German version in different settings. I once worked with a church that prided itself on its German roots, and that included many different unique greetings and traditions passed along from one generation to the next. We don’t all have a strong cultural tradition tied into our family tree that creates this kind of seasonal warmth, but we all have things that some how strike a chord from the past. We tend to hold those things closely and may even react to them if they are brought up or possibly violated.

Remember the outrage over the term “Happy Holidays”?

I write this while sitting in my favourite local Starbucks, and the song “Happy Holidays” just happens to be playing in the background. Sitting here and remembering the outrage is significant because this coffee chain played a big part in the reframing of the language we use in this season. I recall vividly hearing that in the US the same ‘Christmas blend’ of coffee was being sold in alternate packaging, the evil ‘Holiday blend’. I was annually taking a group of high school students to Minneapolis for a youth conference in those years and remember going to a Starbucks, witnessing the different packages myself. The staff assured me that it was the same coffee just in different packaging. Suddenly “Merry Christmas!” became “Happy Holidays!”, and many in my circles were shouting a new greeting for the season: Political Correctness!

The red cup issue of 2015 was the next era of holidays vs Christmas. You can read more about that my clicking on the image above.

The response was simple, and today often does not even cause people to take a second glance: Not everyone celebrates Christmas, knows why it’s called Christmas, or even cares about any part of it. 

I remember getting over myself in those years and learning about my own biases. Now people don’t bat an eye to any of those many salutations, they just say thank you, or ignore. The irony of the “Happy Holidays”, which made me giggle when people would get upset hearing it instead of ‘Christmas’, is the very word ‘holidays’ is derived from the term ‘holy days’. So it actually was, and is, quite suitable for a season with many celebrations. It recognises others being in your presence, and being in their own space simultaneous. Recognising that others may not be in the majority in the space I dwell, that may not honour my traditions, may not worship what I worship, heck, may not worship at all, but still keep a welcome and safe space for them to be. It required so little energy but held so much grace.

I guess you might say the shift for me was remembering that the story I hold dear, held space of welcome at so many levels, in an unwelcome setting, with historically gracious implications. 

The whole season surrounding Christmas is filled with meaning and opportunities to pause and reflect. As a ‘welcome guy’, it represents more to me than nearly all other celebrations on the church calendar. ‘Incarnation’, a word that easily gets misplaced in churchy language and theological dialogue, is the essence of the story of God and creation. It receives so some celebration in history because it is truly an amazing concept: God becomes human, a humble action of grace for all that he formed into existence. There might be a lot in that statement for you to agree or disagree with, but the Christ intersecting the human story is mind blowing, and we are welcome to acknowledge together, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” 

This Christmas season, my hope is you find and give ‘welcome’, that you truly bless others with the essence of God being with the world he loves.