Andrew Lawton talks about the war on Christmas and why we should celebrate the season even if it means saying Merry Christmas back to people who don't celebrate it. Merry Christmas and God bless you and Merry Christmas!
00:00:00.360Every year around this time we see a very similar narrative unfold in the media.
00:00:05.120People on the right will decry the war on Christmas, people on the left will say the war on Christmas is just a work of conservative fiction,
00:00:12.260a boogeyman meant to rile people up and generate outrage for no particular reason.
00:00:17.620And to be honest, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.
00:00:20.420I don't think there's a war on Christmas per se, but there is a war on common sense.
00:00:25.280And I think a lot of time that actually rears itself specifically around Christmas.
00:00:31.760Undeniably, there are stories that we see year after year where someone or some company or some school will make a very anti-Christmas declaration.
00:00:40.460We've seen lots of them this year from the school principal that banned candy canes because they look like the letter J for Jesus.
00:00:47.360And we see all the time radio stations that are saying, well, we won't play anything that has a Christian theme.
00:00:53.960Or this year, baby, it's cold outside.
00:00:56.840Well, look, Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, gave Christmas declarations his last few years in office.
00:01:02.160And a couple of them didn't even mention Christianity or Jesus, which is kind of the reason for the season, as they say.
00:01:09.260There are lots of these examples, but do they indicate a full-throated war on Christmas?
00:01:13.740And if so, who is it that's actually behind it?
00:01:17.000There are lots of people that want to say that people are coming from other parts of the world and saying that you can't say Merry Christmas.
00:01:33.780They don't care about us celebrating Christmas.
00:01:35.760It's these white secular liberals, these people that just want to take away anything that might cause offense to others, even if that offense isn't actually being caused.
00:01:44.980And let me share with you a story from my own life.
00:01:47.100Every year, I make it a bit of a tradition when I go over to my parents' house for Christmas morning to stop and get coffee from one of the nearby Tim Hortons that might be open on Christmas Day.
00:01:57.240And two years, I went to one where the same woman was working.
00:02:00.580A woman working on Christmas morning, serving coffee to people like me, wearing a Santa hat over top of her hijab.
00:02:07.280A Muslim woman who very beamingly says Merry Christmas to everyone who goes through.
00:02:13.040She doesn't care that I celebrate Christmas because I don't care that she doesn't.
00:02:17.700And that's what makes the Christmas season, and indeed, that's what makes a pluralistic society great.
00:02:25.100You don't have to share someone's views to respect that they have them.
00:02:28.840And you don't need to feel that you celebrating something comes at the expense of something else.
00:02:34.580And this is what that CBC writer missed the memo on a few weeks back, where she says that, you know, maybe we need to tone down the Christmas and focus more on Kwanzaa and Hanukkah and Diwali and all of these other things.
00:02:46.280Well, it's great to focus on those things if you believe in those things.
00:02:50.280But we're fooling ourselves as a society if we think that the majority of people don't celebrate Christmas.
00:02:55.820Christians celebrate it because of the religious connotations, but even non-Christians celebrate it because of the cultural impact that it has.
00:03:05.140It's the only holiday of its kind that is actually celebrated by people who oftentimes believe in a religion or belief system that is different than the one that actually spawned Christmas.