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It’s true that, during the past few years, there has been a sort of ongoing interrogation of Christmas traditions. What was in that drink in “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”? Should Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer really serve, rather than resist, Santa? But this academic line of questioning has nothing to do with Trump’s decision to send out a White House card with “Merry Christmas” on it, rather than Barack Obama’s “Season’s Greetings.” (And, in any case, the Obamas recorded many a “Merry Christmas” message. Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump just sent out a “Happy Holidays” greeting on Twitter.)
Trump’s choice of phrase seems mostly to be part of his program to reverse the protocols of his predecessor, whose existence as a model of elegance in office continues to be a source of irritation for him. (Just last month, USA Today ran an editorial titled “Will Trump’s Lows Ever Hit Rock Bottom?,” stating that Trump is unworthy to swab out the facilities in Obama’s Presidential library.) There is, of course, Trump holiday merch—a hat that says “Merry Christmas” on the back and “make america great again” on the front—and a new set of decorations in the White House, so eerily sterile and lifeless, judging from the photographs, that they seem to have been designed by the White Witch of Narnia.
Yet, for all that, the secular or the merely skeptical should not refuse Trump’s call to say “Merry Christmas.” They should embrace it. Christmas has always been a happily mixed-up holiday for mixed-up people and confused cultures. It is, at its roots, the very model of a pagan-secular-synthetic festival as much as it is a religious one—just the kind, in fact, that the imaginary anti-Christmas forces are supposed to favor.
Historians have pointed out that, whatever we’re celebrating on December 25th, it isn’t the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, who, they surmise, was probably born sometime in September, or possibly in the spring, when the shepherds would have been out tending their flocks. The accounts in the Gospels are famously varied, with shepherds appearing only in the Gospel of Luke and the wise men in the Gospel of Matthew. This has led apologists to insist that they were all there; it’s just that somebody sitting on one side of the stable could see only the shepherds, and another witness across the way saw only the wise men. (And, whoever came to the party, Jesus is revered by Muslims, along with his Christian followers.)
It was not until the fourth century that the Church decided that December 25th would be the date to celebrate, and the real origin of this move was an act of what is now called “cultural appropriation.” In classical times, there were already two Roman solstice festivals celebrated in midwinter: Saturnalia and the Kalends of January. Saturnalia was a “reversal” feast, an upside-down holiday, when slaves could be masters for a day. The central figure was Saturn, and his representative on earth was a guy so bursting with robust fertility that he was allowed into daily life only once a year, as the Saturnalicus princeps, or king for a day. A lot of northern festivals got woven in over the centuries, including Yule, with its blazing logs and its brightly lit bushes—beautiful displays of light in a dark time of year.
To this mixed-up foundation was added, in modern times, still more kinds of mixup, with the Saturn figure, by way of Holland’s cult of St. Nicholas, turning into Santa Claus, a saintly figure of the virtuous side of capitalist materialism, sort of like Warren Buffett today. In that pursuit, New York’s miscellaneous scribblers—often writing on deadline, let it be said—made an inordinate contribution. There was Clement Clarke Moore, who published “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” (or “A Visit from St. Nicholas”), in 1823; Francis Pharcellus Church, the staff writer for the New York Sun, who wrote the “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial, in 1897; and, most of all, the great cartoonist Thomas Nast, who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, invented the image of the modern Santa Claus. Meanwhile, almost all the best Christmas songs were written by Jewish guys: Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne, Irving Berlin, and Jay Livingston, who wrote “Silver Bells.”
We could go on, but the point seems made. Christmas—whether it is observed for religious or seasonal reasons or just for the hell of it—is in its origins and in its imagination and its implications indissolubly syncretist. However people choose to celebrate it, Christmas is unique in that it is both a reversal festival, with kids bossing the adults around and gifts for all, and a renewal festival, with stars, and trees, and parents and a newborn child, the most natural symbol of the continuity of life.
The interrogation of tradition is a fine and healthy thing. But sometimes a tradition turns out to hold many of the answers within it. So right-minded pluralists should, instead of rejecting Christmas caps, seize on them with joy—or, better yet, make their own. Make your own hat, good people, as the carollers might sing, and say your own kind of “Merry Christmas.” In the long light of history—the consoling light to which we turn with every darkened day—everybody has a piece of this holiday already. The war on Christmas is over. Christmas won. ♦
This article appears in the print edition of the January 1, 2018, issue, with the headline “Christmas Stories.”