Happy Holidays; a big deal?

Lots of discussion these days about the de-Christmas-ing of Christmas. Many now posit the theory that Happy Holidays is a sure fire greeting that says how dare you celebrate Christmas. Well, we should be careful because that may not always be the case.

We all can agree that where the intent is clearly to minimize Christmas, like communities putting up holiday trees or a corporate policy that forces employees to never mention Christmas; that's just sheer nonsense. But don't assume my "Happy Holidays" always means anti Christmas.

When we were kids growing up we were thrilled that we had a long holiday from school, usually a few days before Christmas Day all the way to the day after New Years. In college we got about 30 days off; often referred to as the "holidays". My "Happy Holidays" in years past was not to infer a mixing of religious or cultural differences, it referred to Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, New Years Day and, after I met my wife, her birthday, December 26th.

So if you ever bump into the good Deacon and I say enjoy your holidays or something along those lines, no offense intended. I'm 100% Christ in Christmas.

In fact, if we truly followed our faith life over our secular life, we would be celebrating Advent right now. We would have advent wreaths or Jesse trees and we would bust out all the stops for Christmas on December 24th. As people of faith, we would keep the Christmas season, which runs from dusk on the 24th through the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. We should sing our favorite Christmas carols well into the early days of January. And we should never throw out the tree on December 26th and pull down the lights for a few weeks after the big day. Do we celebrate "little Christmas"? Remember the emphasis we also used to place on the traditional Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th.

So Happy Holidays to me = Merry Christmas, Blessed Advent and an ongoing celebration of Jesus the Christ coming as a babe, coming in the Word, Sacrament and Eucharist, and coming again!