Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas

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christmas 2007
Image by paparutzi via Flickr

If you’re out there waging your insurgent campaign to defend Christmas from those that have invaded your holiday and claimed it for their own, apparently throwing Christ in lock-up and using enhanced interrogations against him, I’ve got one simple message to you:

Don’t wish me a “Merry Christmas!”

Please, for the love of all things holy, don’t do it!  Why?  Simple.

IT ISN’T CHRISTMAS!

There’s no war on Christmas.  Christ isn’t missing.  You know why?

IT ISN’T CHRISTMAS!

He isn’t here yet!  You’ve got the wrong season!  It isn’t Christmas.  No amount of combat and improvised explosive devises will make it Christmas.

Here’s a quick little clue: you know that song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”?  Guess what?  That’s about the real Christmas!  You know, Christmas Day and the 11 days before Ephiphany.  That’s Christmas!

But you aren’t waging a war to take back that Christmas from the infidels.  You aren’t trying to put Christ back into December 26th to January 5th, the real Christmas.

And you know what actually is the best greeting for this season?  Surprise!  “Happy Holidays” actually is best!  You know why?

That tiny minority of the population that is atheist or non-Christian (a sliver of the population) already has to endure the march through Advent from Thanksgiving with the ridiculous mass consumption associated with Christmas.  They even get their own holidays ignored during this time as the drum beats get louder and louder as the warpath of consumption and greed overtakes even the most spiritually in tune among us.  And people are complaining about being greeted wrongly based on a season that hasn’t arrived yet?

Me?  I love Christmas.  When it actually arrives!  But in Advent, I don’t pretend it is Christmas.

How many Christmas terrorists are going to throw their trees out on the 26th before Christmas has even really started?  How many are going to wish “Happy New Year!” on the 31st and 1st, when “Merry Christmas” is most appropriate?  And our New Year’s day was back in November, anyway.  Are you going to observe all 12 days?  What will you do on Twelfth Night?  Let me guess.

NOTHING!

Because, for all of this talk of “the reason for the season,” you don’t even know what the season is.