Pardon My Values, but Merry Christmas to All

If some calamity punches holes in our records and books, and leaves in its wake only fragments, have you ever wondered what archeologists several centuries down the road will deduce about this holiday we call Christmas? I predict they will speak with certainty of a civilization that worshiped flying reindeer, bemoaned Grandma getting run over by them, and fretted about one with a red nose beset by sibling rivalry issues.

With professorial pomposity, they will prattle on about our elves, snowmen, bells, trees, toys, gingerbread and eggnog. And they won't have the foggiest notion about what put the whole holiday in motion in the first place.

Not that there's anything wrong with elves, snowmen and bells. But isn't it time to recognize one overwhelming fact? The pseudo-serious buzz we hear each year about recapturing the "true meaning of Christmas" originates among the same demographic category that helps block it from happening: Christians themselves.

Eighty-two percent of us are Christians in this nation, but we're wimps. Too many of us have stopped saying Merry Christmas. My Jewish friends will say it to me. But Christians offer up PC drivel about Happy Holidays. Happy Holidays? Humbug. Happy's for January through November; December is for Merry. As in Merry Christmas.

If my Jewish friends are comfortable wishing me a Merry Christmas, but my fellow Christians aren't, there's something wrong in Christendom.

All of which reminds me of something Ted Koppel did on ABC's "Nightline" 22 years ago. He signed off his Christmas Eve program this way:

"Those of us who work at this profession of journalism are rarely at such a loss for words as when someone asks us to define the nature of news. Usually we mumble something about the importance of an event -- or its relevance or timeliness; hoping all the while that no one will ask "important or relevant to whom?" As for timeliness, all that means, of course, is that something happened recently. Well, the event that Christians around the world celebrate this evening and tomorrow did not, of course, happen recently. It was relevant (at the time) to only the tiniest handful of people; and as for its importance, I think most of us in the news business would have to concede that, had we been there nineteen hundred and eighty-two years ago in Bethlehem, we would probably have overlooked the event. Which says something about what's news -- and what's important. From all of us at 'Nightline,' Merry Christmas."