Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 2nd) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

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This was originally posted on December 2, 2005 on my old blog. Sadly, not much has changed in the 17 years since I wrote this post.

The Big Christmas Controversy

A recent letter to the editor in our local paper condemned “sectarianism and ultra liberalism” practiced by stores that use the phrase “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” The letter writer also objected to the word “Xmas” in place of “Christmas.” He suggested that shoppers boycott stores that “refuse to utter the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ for fear of offending a non-Christian customer.”

I’m a realist and I understand that the predominant religion in the U.S. is Christian. As a non-Christian, I feel fully assimilated into the American society for most of the year. But for the four or five week period between Thanksgiving, a traditional American holiday that my family and I celebrate, and Christmas, a religious one that we do not, I feel somewhat alienated.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy this time of year and I appreciate the overall cheer and festive atmosphere of the holiday season. I suppose I can even put up with the continual playing of Christmas music in malls, shops, restaurants, and on many radio stations. I am impressed with the decorative efforts of my friends and neighbors as they light up their homes for the season. My family and I will even drive around at night admiring the most tastefully and delightfully decorated houses.

But it’s also at this time of the year the fact that I’m not Christian becomes quite evident. Ours is one of the few houses in my neighborhood that is not lit up with Christmas lights and decorations. The view from the street into my living room window reveals the only house on our block that doesn’t show off a bright and blinking tree with an angel or a star on the top.

I sometimes feel uncomfortable at this time of the year because I’m often asked if I’ve finished putting up my Christmas lights or if I’ve completed decorating our Christmas tree. Sometimes I just smile and nod, rather than create a situation where everyone feels at least a bit awkward by saying, “I don’t celebrate Christmas.”

What I can’t quite grasp, though, is why some Christians find it so offensive for people to say “Happy Holidays,” an inclusive gesture of seasonal goodwill, when “Merry Christmas” is exclusive, even if just to a small percent of the population. Why is it so important, as the writer of the letter said, for those “who embrace the birth of Jesus Christ” to shop only in stores that make a point to remind those of us who are not Christian that we are different? Doesn’t “Happy Holidays” work for everyone who goes to malls, stores, and restaurants?

The letter writer doesn’t want secularism to “diminish the celebration of our Lord and Savior’s birth on December 25.” But what about those of us who don’t celebrate a lord and savior’s both on December 25th?

Malls and shops and restaurants, even at this time of the year, are not intended to be places to celebrate the birth of Christ, to practice religion, or to promote a particular theology. These are, in fact, secular sites intended for shopping, eating, or just hanging out.

There is, however, a definitive venue for those who wish to celebrate the birth of their Lord and Savior. It’s called church.