I tried to write a Christmas column without mentioning president-elect Donald Trump; as you can see, I have failed.
You may have preferred not to think about Trump during the season that celebrates the birth of the man who said, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” Jesus must have been scratching his head on Nov. 8.
But Jesus can afford to take the long view, and maybe eventually he’ll be right. But for the rest of us, Trump’s outsized personality tends to suck the mistletoe out of the room.
Trump’s chief Christmas message bears some consideration: Earlier this month, he promised to make the nation safe for saying “Merry Christmas.” “So when I started 18 months ago,” Trump said. “I told my first crowd in Wisconsin that we are going to come back here someday and we are going to say ‘Merry Christmas’ again.” Take that!
But the notion that the term “Merry Christmas” has been suppressed by secularists as a tactic in a larger “War on Christmas” has never held up very well to scrutiny. It derives from two initiatives, both of them commendable:
The first involves the question of why our government should spend taxpayers’ money to fund public expressions of religious faith at courthouses and schools or, more to the point, why it should privilege any particular religion over others or none at all in an increasingly diverse culture.
The second initiative involves private businesses that began to realize that not every customer who walks through their doors is a Christian and to recognize that the assumption that every Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist is celebrating Christmas might begin to grate after a while. So they began to substitute “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings” in a decent and generous effort to acknowledge the feelings of individuals.
The idea that Merry Christmas has been the victim of an organized attempt to purge it from our language, along with our Judeo-Christian heritage, is all in all fairly ridiculous.
And it’s certainly not supported by an MSNBC videotape referenced by E.J. Dionne in a Washington Post column last week: It shows President Obama — whose Christianity many on the right still question — saying “Merry Christmas” some 20 times in different contexts.
No outrage ensued, no consternation and no investigations by the political correctness police.
Still, Trump got a lot of political mileage out of making people fear that their religious liberties are threatened, thereby taking advantage of three of religion’s least desirable characteristics: tribalism, grievance and aggression.
At its best religion promotes tolerance and inclusion, and maybe we’re getting better at them. But more often than not, religion still provides the principles by which we divide ourselves into groups. Few other human elements generate as much capacity to take offense. And few stoke the depth of passion that can make people willing to fight and even die for what they see as a greater cause.
Trump was able to capitalize on our inherent inclination to feel grievance and our need to defend ourselves from others. His use of religion in this way is somewhat ironic since no one would mistake him for a conventionally devout person. He’s clearly profane, lewd and materialistic, he stumbles when he tries to name his favorite scripture and he mispronounces books of the Bible that are completely familiar to any semi-serious adolescent Sunday school student.
He’s the opposite of humble, and it’s impossible to imagine him loving his enemies or turning the other cheek. Of course, it’s not our place to judge anyone else’s religiosity. After all, Jesus said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” But Jesus also said, “Ye shall know them by their fruits,” which in Trump’s case are rather bitter.
So Trump is an odd advocate for us to choose to defend our unchallenged right to say “Merry Christmas.” But I say it to you, nevertheless, along with Happy Holidays and Season’s Greetings. And a Happy New Year.
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