When December rolls around, the majority of what we hear on the radio and see on TV are advertisements for the Christmas season. All deals regarding buying gifts relate to Christmas time and making money off the institutionalized holiday.
Arguably, Christmas has becomes increasingly religiously neutral the more it is exploited by big businesses and corporations. Christmas’s common practices of the family coming together, singing songs, baking goods, and attending Christmas parties has taken the attention away from Christmas as a religious holiday. This raises questions then on why the headline “Why Some Christians Are Upset at Starbucks’ New Holiday Cups,” is real and why any Christian would be angry that Starbucks chose not to invalidate the religious celebration to sell products.
Starbuck’s new holiday coffee cup fails to have any specific references to Christmas, and the article goes on to quote the extremists of the conflict, all of which you can see here. Starbucks’s response was cordial and respectful. Their opinion is that they want to encourage the holiday season, but they don’t want to force any one religion or holiday on their customers. Which can not be said for a lot of other major businesses.
On a grander scale, the exploitation of the Christmas spirit by businesses, charities and the media, has already taken away some of the religion of Christmas, as some people call it X-mas. Yet, the institution of Christmas is actually a good thing.
The holiday season has always been a generous time of year. Both children and adults feel compelled to do more good; that’s when the Salvation Army launches one of their greatest charity campaigns. There’s amazing christmas lights, the mall gets a Santa Claus, and you can turn on the radio to hear only Christmas music all the time. It’s not just a religious celebration, it’s an American institution, and it should be treated that way.
An article written by Time magazine writer, Charlotte Alter, explains why it should be okay for Jewish people to celebrate Christmas. As a matter of fact, several Jewish people already celebrate the institutionalized holiday, “according to a Pew survey from the Religion and Public Life Project, 32% of Jews have a Christmas tree in their homes, and 71% of Jews married to non-Jews have a tree..” writes Alter, a Jew herself who likes to participate in the Christmas season.
Nowadays, the point of Christmas goes much further than simply the religious celebration. Of course, Christians still will recognize Christmas as a religious celebration, and that’s okay. In the end, creating a holiday that applies to everyone will encourage a greater sense of community much like Thanksgiving and Halloween. You can expect everyone to participate, avoiding any cultural violations, and allowing everyone to stop resisting a holiday that big businesses and corporations have already imposed upon us.
