friday, december 12, 1975
daily nebraskan
page 5
innocent bystander
Let's take Christmas out of com mercia I ism
By Arthur Hoppe
Tlie Christmas season on which our beleaguered eco
nomy so desperately depends is now officially open. Time
magazine reports the nation's merchants are happily pre
dicting a 10 per cent increase in retail sales.
In fact, this could be our biggest Christmas ever.
Of course, nowhere in its seven-page cover story on the
Christmas season does Time mention Christ. And we're
obviously in for the usual complaints from bleeding-heart
idealists about the "over commercialism of Christ's birth
day." These do-gooders overlook three facts: (1) such com
plaints have never done any good in the past; (2) unless we
give each other billions of dollars worth of useless junk
every Dec. 25, the country will go to the bow-wows: and
(3) the odds are 36 to 1 that it isn't Christ's birthday any
way. This last gives hope for a compromise that should
millify all factions: Instead of try ing to take commercialism
out of Christmas, let's simply take Christmas out of com
mercialism. After all, no one seems to know the exact dat of Christ's
birth. No one appears to have thought about it until 200
A.D. And since then it's been variously celebrated on Jan.
6, Dec. 25 and Jan. 10, to name a few. So there's no reason
we can't celebrate it any other day we want to.
Once we have removed Christmas from Dec. 25, we can
call that day "Xmas," giving no offense to purists and con
siderable delight to sign painters and headline writers. Best
of all, Xmas would be completely ecumenical and you
wouldn't have to worry about sending religious cards to
friends of the Zoroastrian persuasion.
We would continue, of course, to have Xmas trees, Xmas
presents, Xmas carols (but only about decking .halls and
partridges in pear trees), and Xmas office orgies. But we
would feel no fuilt that they had no spiritual significance.
And Xmas would naturally be preceded by National Buy
Till It Hurts Month, just as it is today. So the economy
would be saved.
The only problem is what to do with Christmas. Most
people I talked to said they had no strong feeling about
what day it should fall on as long as it was a Monday so
they would have a three-day weekend.
One lady said she'd always wanted it observed in Jan
uary so she could take advantage of the white sales, but she
forgot we're not giving Christmas presents any more. And
one patriot suggested July 4, "seeing this is our Bicenten
nial year."
But I liked best the young lady who said, "Let's make it
a surprise birthday because surprise parties are best." That
would be nice. Then you could look up at the start when
ever you wanted to and say, "Happy birthday, dear friend."
Heck", there may even be some Christians somewhere
who might want to celebrate the occasion every day of the
year.
(Cophright Chronicle Publishing Co. 1975)
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