Simple Gifts... Word Wars

The word wars have begun. I get e-mails every week exhorting me to hold the godless hordes at bay by wishing everyone a “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays”. Evidently we are under siege and our Christian nation is at risk because of the words we use to wish each other well. Some of my friends who are very conservative, dare I say it, fundamentalists, do not celebrate Christmas at all so this is a moot issue for them.
Being the cantankerous South Georgia girl that I am, I Googled the phrase and found some interesting information. Merry Christmas was first used in 1699 in a letter written by an English admiral and then again by Charles Dickens in his book “A Christmas Carol” in 1849. The most common holiday greeting then was “Happy Christmas”. The word “merry”, of course, means happy and “Christmas” refers to Christ’s Mass in Old English. Most of the folks I know who get their knickers in a twist over this issue are not Catholic so I can’t help but wonder...
The fact of the matter is these words began as a cultural tradition in a time when much of daily life revolved around the church. They are not found anywhere in our Bible nor are they a part of a theological basis for Jesus’s coming into our world as God’s Son. My daddy and I argued a lot (arguing was Daddy’s favorite entertainment) about everything. One day we were arguing about the King James Bible, the one and only true translation according to him. One of my finer moments in that tradition was when I asked him if he believed in education (knowing he valued education and learning). He said “yes”, of course. Then I asked him if education had taught us many new things since King James time.We named a few. I moved in for the kill... Why is it we can use air conditioning, watch t.v., accept antibiotics for infections, drive cars and fly in airplanes but we cannot accept that Biblical scholarship could make the same sort of progress as the rest of our world? I love the language of the King James Bible. The images, the taste of the words rolling off my tongue, the comfort of my first words of faith are found in that book. The twenty third Psalm never sounds quite right in any other translation. But it is not the final word or the final words that sum up my faith.
How I wish we could worry more about how we live as Christians the rest of the year and relax at Christmas. There is nothing inherently evil in a cultural Christmas celebration. Santa Claus is great fun and having fun is not a sin. If we Christians live as the light and salt of the earth the other 364 days of the year, we have nothing to worry about. Ooops...