Merry Mythmas

No, I’m not at war with Christmas.

I use to write X-mas merely as shorthand.  On box lids.  In emails. On greeting cards.
Then the war started.  I don’t remember when it began. The body count hasn’t risen above zero since it started.  But I’m being told that little baby Jesus is being maliciously attacked every year by laser-guided uranium-tipped lexicon missiles.

Since when did Christ (and more specifically the arbitrary date of his birth) need all this defending?  If I saw Jesus on the street and wished him Happy Holidays, would he really smite me with a bolt of lighting that zigzagged down from the clouds, burning my soulless, heathen body to a crisp?  Aren’t there more important things to worry about?  Helping the needy.  Fighting the AIDS epidemic.  Getting our troops home safely.

If I’m at war with anything, it’s with conspicuous consumerism, pepper spraying people in the face to get a kid’s toy, saying Christmas belongs to Christ while maxing out credit cards.  Disney on Ice.

Now days, I don’t wish people Merry Christmas, or Merry X-mas, or Happy Holidays, or Happy Kwanza, or Good Yule, or Happy Chanukah.  I wish people Merry Mythmas (thank you, Bill Maher).  For the myth that buying things for your loved ones is the measure of how much you care.  For the myth that a tree decorated with small lights and cheap, plastic ornaments is somehow a Christian tradition.  For the myth of a virgin birth.

I say Merry Mythmas for the mythical war on Christmas—we have enough real wars with real body counts already.