IN THEORY:What is the appropriate holiday greeting?

Retail giants such as Wal-Mart, Kohl’s and Walgreens are switching their holiday greetings from “Happy Holidays” to “Merry Christmas” this season. A Wal-Mart spokesman said the company was bringing back the “Merry Christmas” greeting because it’s what the customers want.

“Wal-Mart has seen the light,” said Mathew Staver, founder of Orlando, Fla.-based Liberty Counsel. “The American people are tired of having Christmas censored or secularized.”

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, accused the companies of “making a statement that non-Christians should probably go elsewhere this holiday season.” Which greeting do you think is most appropriate? America is trapped in Iraq; Iran threatens to annihilate Israel; North Korea tests nuclear weaponry; the angel of death stalks Darfur; egregious human rights abuses abound in Chad; Islamic terrorism is pandemic; security is eroding in Afghanistan; billions of people experience grinding poverty and the ravages of disease.

Yes, how fitting for Americans to lavish attention on the political correctness of holiday greetings! Surely, the battle over “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas” is the proper war upon which to focus! Next, we will be consumed with whether to say “Peace on earth, good will toward nongender-specific human beings.”

“I am hard-pressed to think of any other moment in modern times where there have been so many challenges facing this country simultaneously,” said Richard N. Haass, who heads the Council on Foreign Relations. “The danger is that Mr. Bush will hand over a White House to a successor that will face a far messier world, with far fewer resources left to cope with it.”

Since this is just all too depressing, let’s take up the cudgel for Christmas and bash those who do not greet us by referencing Christ’s birth. Those overburdened clerks and bedraggled cashiers had better smile! They must not only say “Merry Christmas,” but mean it too! I don’t want it mumbled perfunctorily; I don’t want a hollow pleasantry; I want eye contact and a glowing countenance! Yes, those shoppers who have just descended to the depths of consumer greed, elbowing others out of the way in their frenzied quest for the holy grail of PlayStation 3 deserve to be welcomed by citing the fact that it is the season of Christmas.

Just before last year’s Christmas, Pope Benedict XVI warned that unbridled commercialization is corrupting the true, spiritual dimension of Christmas: “It is unfortunate that in today’s society of consumerism, the Christmas season suffers from various manifestations of commercial pollution. This risks contaminating its spiritual authenticity, which is characterized by meditation, sobriety and by a joy that is not exterior but intimate.”

In other words, Santa has become more essential to Christmas than Jesus, and if I don’t receive that plasma television, bah humbug! Jesus’ message of self-restraint is lost in the mad dash up and down the aisles, but, of course, the most important thing is that store personnel wish us a “Merry Christmas.”

Some cite anecdotal evidence of Christianity under siege in America, but this is hardly substantiated by the faith’s enormous stature and growing prospects. Magnifying trivialities, while diverting attention from those world crises that should command and absorb our every effort is hardly worthy of adherents of a great faith.

If the goal of those who fuel this fictional culture war is to link the shopping experience with the spiritual wellsprings of the holiday, that cause was lost long ago. It was trampled under hordes of people who will be more afflicted by credit card debt than uplifted by the debt they owe to the life celebrated by Christmas.

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

Happy holidays! The greeting includes everyone and is positive. It picks you up and has positive energy to it. A more specific holiday greeting can be hurtful if you do not celebrate that particular holiday.

Despite the differences, there is similar meaning to both Hanukkah and Christmas. They are doing it with different tools, a menorah and a tree. When it’s cold and dark, we want both heat and light. Jews do it with the possibility of a miraculous little resource called a menorah. Inside of us there is a little light that lasts a lifetime and burns brighter than we ever imagined with a spark of the eternal God, and it helps us assist other people through good deeds. Christians use the light of the tree to feel good, that God loves them and the world so much.

But both religions should not have the same symbol, just like football and basketball play by different rules. The reason I can say this is because my heart is so filled up with Hanukkah, that Christmas is no threat to me. All of this business of threat is simply negative energy. In a month of positive energy, saying one or the other saying of Happy Hanukkah or Merry Christmas can be interpreted as mine is good and yours is bad (the holiday), especially when heard and interpreted by children.

In our religious school at Temple Isaiah, I never have to tell our students why our holiday is good. It is simply ours; and theirs is theirs. One plus one equals two. So happy holidays, everyone.

RABBI MARC S. RUBENSTEIN

Temple Isaiah

Newport Beach

For Wal-Mart to pay its employees a decent wage would be more fitting than holiday greetings, whatever their purported message.

Each person and business may use whichever holiday greetings they wish. But on government property, displays should not show preference to one religion over another. Both are good examples of religious freedom. The real challenge is to find effective ways throughout the year to promote spiritual and humanitarian values in order to counter the materialism, pleasure-seeking and addiction that too often characterize advertising and consumerism.

It is appropriate and honest for stores to use snow, lights, ornaments, gift packages and other secular symbols because they are in the business of selling things and making profits, not teaching spiritual values — whether Christian, Jewish or otherwise. Promoting religion, protecting the free exercise of religion or respect for a diversity of beliefs will have little to do with most retailers’ decisions about how to decorate: Their concern will be how to attract the most customers and how to avoid offending potential purchasers.

My preference is that each person and each religious organization freely express their faith and enrich the community by their messages. In public, I would prefer that symbols of all faiths be used. But stores are free to do what they wish and people can shop wherever they like. However, in government settings, I object to the use of the symbols of only one faith. Fundamentalists from all traditions have been wily in claiming that if they cannot dominate and exclude others, then they have been excluded, censored or denied free exercise of religion.

For Zen Buddhists, the most important holiday of the year occurs on Dec. 8, the commemoration of the enlightenment of the Buddha.

After leaving a life of wealth and privilege, the Buddha tried various spiritual practices without resolving his concerns about suffering, sickness and death. At last he sat under a fig tree, now called a “Bodhi” tree (Sanskrit for “enlightenment”) and resolved to meditate until his questions were answered. On the eighth day, he awakened to the true nature and joy of life, and he spent the rest of his life teaching others how to find it.

I doubt we will see this greeting in any shops, but happy Bodhi Day!

REV. DR. DEBORAH BARRETT

Zen Center of Orange County

Costa Mesa

However we greet one another during these holiday times, let’s remember that this is an opportunity to celebrate God’s gift of love to us with love. I suspect that like so many others, Wal-Mart is celebrating consumer capitalism, which dominates both “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas” in America. To help us remember that love is “the reason for the season,” here is an “author unknown,” but timely version of St. Paul’s 1, Corinthians 13:

If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows,

Strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls,

But do not show Love to my family,

I’m just another decorator.

If I slave away in the kitchen,

Baking dozens of Christmas cookies,

Preparing gourmet meals

And arranging beautifully adorned tables at mealtimes,

But do not show Love to my friends,

I’m just another cook.

If I work at the soup kitchen,

Carol in the nursing home

And give all that I have to charity,

But do not show Love to others,

It profits me nothing.

If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels

And crocheted snowflakes,

Attend a myriad of holiday parties

And sing in the choir’s cantata,

But do not focus on God’s gift of Love,

I have missed the point.

Love stops the cooking to hug the child.

Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the wife/husband.

Love is kind, though harried and tired.

Love doesn’t envy another’s home or its coordinated decor.

Love doesn’t yell at the kids to get out of the way,

but is thankful they are there to be in the way.

Love doesn’t give only to those who are able to give in return, but rejoices in giving to those who can’t.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” ( Cor. 13:7-8a)

Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust, but giving the gift of Love will endure.”

I hope we will celebrate God’s gift of love to us with love!

(THE VERY REV’D CANON) PETER D. HAYNES

Saint Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar

Annually, I see the TV networks wishing people a Happy Hanukkah or Kwanzaa (both happen a week following Christmas this year). I am not offended. I didn’t start a letter-writing campaign, nor did anyone I know. I don’t know anyone who has ever complained about the Kosher food section at Stater Brothers or Vons or by the Passover fliers we receive in the mail each year. I love the fact that each year I get a Bodhi Day card from Deborah and Carol at the Zen Center. I wasn’t offended by the greetings to the Muslims about Ramadan or the publication of the new Muslim Eid stamp released by the U.S. Post Office for two of their religious festivals. We know that many of these wishes are made out of respect, but more because these businesses don’t want to offend their client base.

Everyone has a desire to be respected for who they are and what they believe. Regardless of the financial motivation behind the stores and networks’ greetings, every customer who receives the greetings feels affirmed. To lump all the holidays into a generic greeting is unfortunate. I hope to hear “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Hanukkah” this season.

Dec. 8 is Bodhi day for the Buddhists. Many of them will celebrate tomorrow. I wish them a Happy Bodhi Day. I only wish that in the native lands of these other faiths, Christ followers would have the same freedom.

RIC OLSEN

Lead Pastor

The Beacon

Anaheim

The term “holiday” is inclusive. The term Christmas, which, properly can only pertain to Christ, is selective, limiting and discriminating. However, Christians do represent a majority of Americans (although among themselves they clearly do not agree on just what being a Christian means). And majorities oftentimes try to force their opinions and beliefs on the minorities.

Christian fundamentalists apparently feel that the season is, or should be, only about Christ. They apparently don’t believe that the presence of those with other beliefs should even be acknowledged. To try to deny any acknowledgment of others’ beliefs at this time of the year seems a bit, to borrow a phrase, un-Christian.

But this time of the year has been a holiday season for most of the world long before the time of Jesus. Many cultures and religions have celebrated the season because of the winter solstice, with the promise of longer days ahead. As Christianity grew and became a major religion, what better way was there to overshadow the celebrations of other religious groups than by celebrating at the same time? By co-opting their venue, in a way. Thus, somehow the birth of Jesus has been celebrated in December although the historical record proves that it had to have been in a different time of the year.

Religions come and go. (What happened to all the Zoroastrians? Where are all of Zeus’ followers?) But the seasons keep coming and going, coming and going. Thus, the seasons are well worth celebrating and will still be coming and going by the time Christianity has become just another curiosity of history.

This season affects us all equally (at least, all of us in the northern hemisphere) and is not just for one particular religion. It should be a happy time for all. A celebration. Excluding none. Good will toward all.

Happy holidays!

JERRY PARKS

Member

Humanist Assn.

of Orange County