‘Happy Christmas.’ Why in God’s name should that cause offence?

THE most surprising statistic of the last few days, for my money, came from the priests of St Teresa’s Church, Clarendon Street, in Dublin.

At Sunday’s 11.30 Mass, it was announced that the previous week’s collection for the St Vincent de Paul Society had raised over €25,000. People in the congregation glanced at each other - surprised, yet not surprised. There was nothing self-congratulatory in the air. But perhaps a sense of satisfaction that a good deed had been done.

The same deed has been done in many other parishes and faith communities all over Ireland. Dalkey parish gathered €26,000 in a similar collection. Perhaps it is unfair to single out the wealthier communities. In other places the amounts raised may have been smaller but the donations, as a proportion of people’s incomes, may have been larger. Those who have less often give more, the received wisdom goes.

If the question is ‘why all this generosity?’, then the answer must surely be ‘Christmas.’ For Christians (along with members of other religious groups) the obligation of almsgiving is a constant throughout the year. But this season does something else to many people, including the less religiously committed.

Christmas is a time when concepts such as love, joy and peace have a capacity to touch us more than normally. We especially want to experience happiness in the company of our own loved ones. But we also sense that our joy will only be complete if other people, unconnected to us, get to experience happiness as well. Hence the €25,000.

It won’t change the world and it will leave many people’s problems untouched. But many people are reaching out in the only way they know how and are glad of the opportunity.

For that reason, and for many others, the festival of Christmas can be seen as a gift that Christianity gives to society. So many people appreciate that gift that we regard as cranks those puritanical people who, offended by the very name of Christmas, would take the season away from us and replace it with a poor substitute characterised only by fairy lights and office parties. I refer of course to those people who want to ban the mention of ‘Christmas’ and change the festival using all sorts of bizarre names like ‘Winterval’ and who insist on phrases like ‘Season’s Greetings’ and ‘Happy Holidays’ because the mention of Christ is somehow inappropriate.

Apparently, President John F Kennedy started the trend by omitting ‘Christmas’ from a portion of his December 25 card list in 1962. Today, even the born-again George W Bush feels obliged to wish everybody ‘Happy Holidays.’

Once the question of Christmas becomes political, people rush to defend their positions. The US retail giant Wal-Mart justified its practice of greeting people with ‘Happy Holidays,’ instead of ‘Happy Christmas,’ by attacking the origins of the season itself. Christmas, said a company statement, was a composite of various traditions made up of elements such as Siberian shamanism, Celt and Goth customs, and the worship of Baal. Now, a commercial enterprise might get away with that kind of statement in Ireland, perhaps, where the Christians are rather supine and apt to be trodden upon. But not in America.

The Catholic League of Religious and Civil Rights - which encourages American Catholics to make a connection between the way they spend their dollars and the respect that corporate giants display towards their religious beliefs - took up the case. Wal-Mart now maintains its ‘Happy Holidays’ greeting but, under pressure from the Catholic League, has withdrawn its statement about the origins of Christmas.

As American society becomes more polarised between strongly Christian and militantly secular elements, the battle tends to wage back and forth with Christmas first being excluded, then being restored, and then evicted again - depending on who is charge in City Hall. At various times, the unfortunate children of some American schools have to put up with such things as ‘friendship trees,’ ‘giving trees’ or ‘holiday trees’. They have ‘winter parties’ instead of Christmas treats.

More often than not, the case for banning Christmas comes from champions of the multicultural society and not from those hostile to religion per se. Maybe this is because anti-Christmas propagandists believe the multicultural argument will garner them more support.

IN recent years British society has become more secularised, and there are more and more non-Christians in the population. Birmingham city fathers responded by cancelling Christmas one year, and replacing it by a festival called Winterval.

The strange thing is that members of the minority faith communities and traditions don’t seem to be clamouring for this kind of consideration at all - and some are actively opposed to the gesture. The British Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, is well known for opposing the disestablishment of the Church of England and the repeal of blasphemy laws. “Our particular faith is strengthened by the different particular faiths of others,” Sacks wrote in Persistence of Faith. “And each of the many faiths that constitute a culturally plural Britain is diminished by a weakening of the faith of the majority.”

The Christians, on the other hand, tend to be offended by what they see as a pointless denigration of a much-cherished tradition. “It is a totally unnecessary example of political correctness to avoid sensitivities people simply do not have,” argued Anglican archdeacon John Barton during the Winterval controversy.

It is a pity that our own St James’s Hospital (soon to be renamed ‘Jimmy’s,’ we may suppose, in deference to the times) has got itself embroiled in just such a controversy over a Christmas crib. Last Thursday, hospital staff assembled a crib in the hospital concourse as a backdrop to their carol service. But the plan all along was to remove the crib, once the carol service was over, to the more ‘appropriate’ setting of the hospital chapel. According to a hospital spokesperson, this was because of management sensitivity “to the multidenominational nature of the hospital.”

It sounds like the hospital was trying to have it both ways - getting the charming, heart-warming Christmas scene for the carol service, but removing the crib then in case somebody got offended.

All the hospital has really done is show how little it understands the real needs and aspirations of multiculturalism. In an attempt to promote diversity, it is squashing difference. A cherished tradition of the Christmas majority - which has warmed many a lukewarm Christian and non-Christian heart - is not to be tolerated. You wonder where it will all end. Should Santa Claus not be removed as well, given that his real name is St Nicholas, or because he has been accused of being a stooge of American commercial colonialism?

There must be a better way. We can celebrate the great traditions of religious and cultural minorities in our society. But that doesn’t mean downplaying our own great traditions. We don’t want to kill off the one public celebration that brings out the best in us.