It’s beginning to look a lot like… that generic winter holiday

It’s November and Christmas will be upon us soon. At least I think it will. I keep seeing what looks like Christmas decorations in the stores but they don’t call them Christmas decorations – they call them, “holiday decorations.” Is there another holiday that decorates with Christmas trees, lights, wreaths, and poinsettias that I’m not aware of?

I have to hand it to Lowe’s this year. They’ve taken PC to a new level by renaming Christmas trees, “Family Trees” in their 2007 “Holiday” catalog (the cover is shown here). In the 56 page catalog, featuring hundreds of items, the word “Christmas” appears exactly 2 times.

In in all fairness, Chris Ahearn, Veep of PR for Lowe's, did apologize for calling Christmas Trees "Family Trees" and said, “The error was not caught before the publication was distributed, and Lowe's says it is disappointed in the breakdown in its proofing process.” Now, I don’t like to think the worst of people but let’s just say I have a hard time believing Mr. Ahearn. If they had misspelled “Santa” as “Satan” on one page, I could believe that was an accident. To have a 56 page Christmas catalog nearly void of the word “Christmas” smacks of intent

I hate to pick on Lowe’s, though, because many stores are doing the same thing. What irks me more than anything is that so many of the stores, which are loathe to mention the C-word, rely on Christmas for their entire year’s profit. The day after Thanksgiving has earned the nickname of “Black Friday” because the millions of shoppers who flock to the stores that day finally put some stores “in the black.” So they want the Christmas shopper (or rather, the shopper’s money), they just don’t want to have anything to do with the holiday itself. The old canard is that they don’t want to offend non-Christians. Look, if someone is browsing a catalog of Christmas trees, he probably celebrates Christmas. Imagine a casual reader suddenly shocked seeing the word Christmas - "Oh, these are Christmas trees? I was trying to get landscaping ideas!"

I never look forward to shopping at Christmas – the crowds are just too much for me. But when I do shop, I would like to hear “Merry Christmas.” For those stores choosing not to get into the Christmas spirit, I just won’t bother shopping there. There are still plenty of stores that haven’t caved in to the PC crowd.

Christmas is not about shopping anyway. It’s sad that it’s become the spending spree that it has. But the movement to take Christ out of Christmas has spread to other areas of public life as well. Any day now, I'm expecting the first headline about some city being sued over a nativity scene erected within eye-shot of City Hall.

My mother is a retired, public school teacher. Every year at Christmas time, they decorated their rooms and bulletin boards with snow flakes and snowmen. They were not allowed to show depictions of Christmas trees, Santa Claus, and certainly not a nativity. But above it all she was specifically told that she was not even allowed to explain that Christmas is the time Christians celebrate the birth of Christ! Now honestly, what kind of education can a public school student receive if he can not even be told the history of a holiday that 90% of the country celebrates? Next they’ll be saying that the first Thanksgiving is when the pilgrims thanked the American Indians for helping them get through winter. Oh wait, they do that already.

My family will be celebrating a Christ-centered Christmas again this year. For anyone who may not have read the story of the first Christmas, you can read it here now!

Merry Christmas to All and a Blessed New Year!!