November 30, 2005
Another Side of Christmas Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 09:15 AM EST Though I do not—surprise! surprise!—find myself in agreement with most of his argument in favor of keeping Christmas in the public square, John Steele Gordon has written a truly interesting and informative history of Christmas. For anyone interested in learning more about the topic, I’d strongly recommend Stephen Nissenbaum’s The Battle for Christmas, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize a few years ago. Having grown up as one of a handful of Jewish kids in a predominately Christian small town, I never felt particularly besieged around Christmastime. I enjoy the aesthetics of a good Christmas tree—albeit from a distance—as much as the next guy, and I have a mawkish love of old Christmas movies (Mr. Gordon is exactly right: the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, with Alastair Sim, is the best—or second only to It’s a Wonderful Life). And come December 23 or so, the radio in my apartment is usually fixed to one of the all-Christmas, all-the-time stations. That said, I have some problems with letting Christmas cross over into the public square. Mr. Gordon correctly distinguishes between the secular and sacred strains in the holiday. But it’s not people like John Steele Gordon who concern me. It’s people like John Gibson, the Fox News commentator who flippantly argued, “If the celebration of Christmas by Christians living in the UAE, a Muslim nation, is acceptable, why not here in a Christian nation?” It’s people like Michael Medved who, in a debate over Christmas, informed viewers of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, “We are a deeply religious and deeply Christian nation.” It’s people like Fox News’s resident windbag, Bill O’Reilly, who—again in the context of a debate over Christmas—brazenly labeled America a “Judeo-Christian country” and argued that “we can’t be having Hindu and Buddha. I mean, come on. I mean, this country is founded on Judeo-Christian traditions.” The problem with Mr. Gordon’s thoughtful defense of Christmas in the public square is that it is marginal. Most of the loudest promoters of keeping Christmas in public schools and public spaces mean very much for Christmas to assume profound religious overtones. And they have no problem forcing Christianity on Jews, Hindus, Muslims, other non-Christians, and non-believers, because they clearly believe we are guests in a Christian country. I recently visited my father, who lives in the same small town in New Jersey where I grew up. On that visit I had occasion to talk to his next-door neighbors, two junior high students who have dropped out of the school chorus because the holiday concert includes overtly religious songs. Sure, chorus is an elective. But attending the holiday concert isn’t. (I remember. After all, I attended the same junior high.) And so hundreds of kids at the school will be held as a captive audience while their classmates sing, “Christ the savior is born” and “No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.” Or whichever carols they decide to include in their repertoire. None of this is unusual. It was standard operating procedure when I was growing up for school concerts to include songs with overtly religious messages. I’m sure this isn’t at all what Mr. Gordon has in mind. But many supporters of Christmas in the public square do. Here is where the problem lies.
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