FIghting over Christmas

For the last couple of years there has been a controversy over Christmas, with many conservatives claiming that the traditional media and much of the government and the corporate world have become dismissive of or even hostile to Christmas.
I agree completely with those who disapprove of retailers refusing to mention Christmas in their stores or ads, speaking only of “the holidays” or “your holiday shopping” or “holiday gifts”. My reasons for disapproving, however, are different. What I object to is the companies’ utter hypocrisy in the matter. When retailers in December decorate their stores, place more ads, hire temporary staff, beef up their inventories, and base their hopes for a good year on that one month, the thing they are anticipating is Christmas shopping, and everyone knows it. Not many companies are going to make their numbers on Kwanzaa gifts, Ramadan treats, or solstice presents. For the retailers, Christmas is what matters. They plan for it and count on it and know it is what will make or break their year. Yet, politically correct hypocrisy prevents their acknowledging it. While this says little or nothing about their being hostile to Christianity, it says a great deal about their being phonies, and when this sort of clumsy and cowardly phoniness is so widely displayed in public, it insults people’s intelligence and cheapens the national discourse. For that alone, I figure such companies deserve any boycotts they get.
Beyond what companies are doing, I even agree with the social conservatives that there is a broad effort on the part of some leftists to de-emphasize Christmas. However I do not agree that the hostility to Christmas is simply and only another part of an assault on Christianity. After all, Christmas is not just a Christian holiday. Many people around the world who are either only nominally or explicitly not at all Christians in their beliefs celebrate and enjoy Christmas. Many of the best Christmas traditions – Christmas trees, sending cards, giving gifts to friends and relatives, Christmas dinner with the family, the modern Santa Claus, Scrooge, Rudolph and Frosty, Christmas lights, eggnog, donating to toys for tots, some of the best Christmas songs, Christmas parties and bonuses, The Night Before Christmas, kissing under mistletoe, Christmas cheer, and striving to be a little happier and a bit more friendly and benevolent toward one’s fellow human beings for a while – have pretty much nothing to do with the Christian idea of the nativity. Some of them probably tie to traditions that far antedate Christianity. If the leftists only wanted to attack Christian beliefs, surely Easter would be a better target.
I think rather that a lot of the hostility to Christmas results from simple meanness – a reflexive, pinch-faced distaste for people having fun, spending money, feeling better about themselves and their neighbors, and generally being of good cheer and not needing their rulers or betters to tell them how to behave. Many modern leftists are the most serious sort of puritans, and we know how puritans look at other people’s fun.