Every year the efforts to remain politically correct during the winter holiday season become more and more widespread, making Christians all over the country bristle, as some of you probably did just a moment ago at my usage of the term “winter holiday season” instead of “Christmas holidays.”
The backlash to a more politically correct approach to the Christmas season is equally widespread. When department stores and government buildings across the country began calling their various firs and spruces holiday trees rather than Christmas trees, the response went so far as the courts. Boston officially changed its holiday tree back to a Christmas tree after being threatened with multiple lawsuits.
On a national level, after being renamed and spending a few years as the “Holiday Tree,” the White House’s tree was re-renamed to the “Capitol Christmas Tree.” It is also referred to as the “People’s Tree,” a name probably more closely related to a holiday tree than a Christmas tree.
I can’t help but feel that turning this controversy into a legal matter is silly. Those who object feel the more modern approach is taking the Christ out of Christmas and instead leaving it Xmas, the term for a secular Christmas celebration. But how exactly does calling a tree by holiday or Christmas affect what it is and how we appreciate it? The lights still twinkle, and the ornaments still shine. An Engelmann spruce or Douglas fir by any other name would smell as sweet.
I think it needs reiterating that even though the Christmas tree’s origins were not exactly pagan, since pagans would not cut down living trees, the idea of the Christmas tree is a pagan one. The first documentation of such a tree is in the Old Testament when the Prophet Jeremiah condemned the ancient Middle Eastern practice of cutting down trees, bringing them into the home and decorating them as pagan (Jeremiah 10:2-4). Although these were not Christmas trees, the idea stuck long past the establishment of Christianity.
Pagans did not cut down trees, but during the Roman celebration of Saturnalia, they decorated their homes with clippings of evergreen shrubs and decorated living trees with metal and replicas of their god, Bacchus. Tertullian, an early Christian leader, wrote that too many Christians had copied the pagan practice of adorning their homes with shiny decorations and laurel wreaths, and the early Christian church prohibited the decoration of houses with evergreen boughs.
Opposition to the Christmas tree was strong in the more immediate past as well. The decorated tree only caught on in the mid-1800s when Pastor Henry Schwan of Cleveland decorated the first tree in an American church. His parishioners condemned the practice as Pagan and even threatened harm against the pastor.
Essentially, the Christmas tree symbolizes nothing specific to Christianity. Funny how Christians now feel they own the rights to the name. Perhaps they should be more careful of what they are attempting to lay claim to.
The same goes with other “Christmas” traditions. Customs like the use of the Yule log, holly, mistletoe, the wassail bowl and even caroling have pagan origins and predated Christianity.
Is it so much to ask to recognize some more broadly accepting terms when it comes to the holidays, especially when reminded that those terms are closer to the original meanings of the symbols?
There are some simple things you can do to exhibit a little more religious tolerance in the upcoming months. For example, send out holiday cards rather than Christmas cards. A card decorated with a snowman or a deer in a snow-covered forest surrounded by holly berries is just as seasonally appropriate as a nativity scene. You may think yourself certain your card recipients are all Christian, but some may celebrate other winter holidays like Ramadan, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, or they may celebrate Xmas.
Furthermore, if you have nothing better to do during the holidays than protest what other people are calling their trees, your concentration is not where it should be.
The holiday season is not a time for inserting oneself in the business of other family celebrations, but for immersing yourself in your own family celebration and remembering where your heart is-in your home, surrounded by loved ones. There you can light your candles, enjoy indulgent foods, hang your stockings, exchange gifts or decorate your tree, calling it whatever you like.