The appropriate verbiage with which to wish someone cheer and happiness during the month of December has become quite the heated debate over the last several years. Signage in my home town has shifted from a poorly lit display of "Merry Christmas" to a poorly lit display of "Season's Greetings." Companies seeking to earn your holiday bonus have been faced with heavy pressure to abandon the focus of this time of year on Christmas, striving instead to tailor to a seemingly endless number of seasonal traditions. These events have led some, mostly conservative Chrisitians, to decry these efforts as political correctness taken too far.
My feelings towards the issue have changed dramatically over the last several years. I use to be passionately involved in the defense of Christmas, refusing to wish a "Happy Holidays" to anyone, due more to arrogance than an actual concern for Christ' birth. Now, I ask the question, who cares if your favorite department store wishes you a “Happy Holidays” as opposed to a “Merry Christmas?” A department store that takes a story of servitude and self-sacrifice and transforms it into a season filled with materialism and greed has no business using the name of Christ to begin with.
I'm lead to believe now that the biggest threats against Christmas these days are not the secular left or political correctness. We as Christians should not waste our time fighting against secular society. Instead, we should concentrate our efforts on bringing the love of Christ and the kingdom of God to the world, and worrying about a salesperson at Macy's wishing you a "Merry Christmas" isn't going to produce that. In my opinion, the biggest threats against Christmas are consumerism, materialism, and greed, and they have been corrupting the essence of Christ for many years.
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