By Mark Rhoads -
I don't have hard data and can only offer anecdotes. But it seems to me that this year I heard many more people say "Merry Christmas" rather than "Happy Holidays" than at any time in the last six years. Several factors might be at work that could explain why this trend is growing and making a comeback.
First, it could be a reaction from Christians who have felt that their most sacred religious day has been marginalized in the public square by intellectually dishonest judges, academics, and pundits on the Left.
Second, it could be partly the result of more prominent Jewish commentators such as Dennis Prager saying that he is not and never has been offended by a Gentile who says "Merry Christmas" to him. Or it could be a combination of several different factors including old-fashioned common sense that just happened to mature simultaneously this year.
Although this point is often debated by secularists, the so-called ecumenical secular greeting of "Happy Holidays" more likely than not still comes from a 800-year-old form of a religious greeting. The source for this interpretation is the The New Oxford American Dictionary which says “ORIGIN: Old English hāligdæg [holy day.]” The common-sense argument against the secularization of Christmas is that the very word contains the word Christ which by nature is a religious or faith-based concept of the Son of God and savior.
As I wrote here before in a recent post about the veterans cross vs. the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California, the secular Left is deliberately dishonest when they try to equate any recognition of God as the same thing as "an establishment of religion" prohibited by the First Amendment. It is clear from the context of the debates in The Federalist Papers that the authors of the First Amendment mostly intended to prohibit the national government from endorsing only one official denomination as King George, III and Parliament had done in endorsing only the Church of England and giving that denominaton, headed by the King, a special status of privilege with the backing of the government. The authors of the First Amendment, wanted the opposite. They did not want the new U.S. government to endorse any deonomination over any other denomination. That is light years from the misguided idea that they wanted the government to be officially secular and chase any religious faith from the public square. As more Christians understand the deliberate nature of the false interpretation of a "separation of church and state" being sold by the secular Left, they will become more sophisticated and effective in making counter arguments to protect the basic freedom to worship that was intended by the authors of the Bill of Rights. If someone is actually offended by your greeting of "Merry Christmas" it is much more likely to be someone who is a secularist and who chooses to be offended to make a political point than someone from a different faith tradition. Merry Christmas to one and all including atheists, agnostics, and secularists. I cannot help it if you choose to be offended but I can only affirm that giving you offense is not my intention, but wishing you the blessing of a joyous day is.
