Is 'Merry Christmas' so awful?

Editorial printed on 16 December 2001

What a world.

I sat at my son's Cub Scout pack meeting the other night, shaking my head with sadness and amusement.

Political correctness will do that to you.

Here we had a cluster of Cub Scouts, trying to sing a holiday song the way kids who shouldn't have a care in the world have done for years.

These days, kids do have to care — and for the entire world — lest their cheer be taken on the chin by someone with not enough gifts to wrap.

"Happy Holidays!" sang the front row.

"Happy Holidays!" echoed the back.

"While the merry bells keep ringing, may your every wish come true."

All was jingling right along, until verse three.

"Happy Holidays," the boys chirped. "Happy Ramadan."

Did I hear that right? Or was it the sound of Irving Berlin spinning in his grave?

"May this month be joyful, happy Ramadan to you."

Oh, brother. I looked at the other parents and saw The Look. You know it. It's the stiff smile of people going along with the well-intentioned yet absurd belief that the United Nations is doing spot celebration checks of every all-purpose room in every public school in America.

Commit a perceived act of exclusion and you risk your Compassionate Citizen papers.

That's what prompted King County Executive Ron Sims to jot this year's infamous holiday memo, asking county employees to offer a generic "Happy Holidays" rather than curl anyone's boots with a sincere "Merry Christmas."

The fuss that followed Sims' 24-hour PC virus made it clear that we have all had enough. In an effort to include everyone, we've eliminated what is special to each of us — and what shouldn't offend anyone.

I'm all for celebrating these days. We need Hanukkah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa — anything that merries up our mood. But I now look back on my childhood Christmases the way some people look back at the time before World War II: A more naive, simple society that didn't feel like it was walking on eggs.

I took so much for granted, rituals that today would bring greetings from the ACLU.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" would be edited to eliminate that overtly religious section where Linus recites, chapter and verse, the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. He talks about how the angel came to Mary. He says "lo," and "savior," and "Lord."

And he carries out this offense on the stage of a tax-funded, public school!

Good grief!

(And while we're at it, where are all the parents of these "Peanuts" children, who walk through snowy nights and Christmas tree lots without adult supervision? Pigpen is filthy. Lucy conducts amateur psychiatry on the street. Someone call DSHS!)

Our efforts at sensitivity land like an anvil.

So let's all just calm down and treat those who wish us Happy Whatever with the same grace we show those who give us gifts that we may not have picked for ourselves:

It's the thought that counts.

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