I am not a lover of Christmas. It’s a good thing my wife is, or I’d just discontinue the tradition altogether and my kids would be seriously pissed off. The trees and the lights are kind of pretty, although I worry about killing off such a huge number of trees each year. I really don’t like most traditional Christmas movies and even the ones I once thought were fairly good films (Love, Actually) I’m sick of seeing every goddamned year regular as clockwork.
Here in the Czech Republic, we celebrate on the 24th and it’s now over. The nicest thing about this Christmas was that Helena’s grandmother was there, which was not a foregone conclusion. She is old, and pretty much never gets out of bed any more.
In her cheerful, old person’s way of speaking, she said “Oh, this is so nice, my last Christmas” and my father in law said “Herr Gott! (he uses that phrase a lot) You’ve been saying that for 10 years!” Which is true, come to think of it.
Anyway, I was glad she made it to this one.
One reason I’m glad it’s over, though, is that we can now have a year long truce in this war on Christmas bullshit. So, these are my final thoughts on the subject for this year: it is perfectly fine to say “Merry Christmas!” It is a traditional greeting and people throughout the English speaking world have been saying it for a couple of centuries, at least.
It is not O.K. to say “I say Merry Christmas.” When you say that, you are staking out a position, you are adding a bit of Christian ideology to what used to be a pleasant and harmless greeting.
I hope we don’t have to have this argument again next year, but I’m not holding my breath.

