As the world marks 2025 years since the birth of Jesus Christ, saviour of those who believe in Him (I do), the war of words continues and Christians remain suspecting victims on the battle ground of political correctness: Is it merry Christmas or happy holidays?
The season’s greeting “Happy Holiday” continues to rouse friction within Christendom and much of modern secular society, especially in the western world among conservative and liberal political and religious groups. Many Merry-Christmas-folks feel slighted by that phrase. The Churched find it a disrespectful, ideological attack on not only Christian tradition and cultural heritage, but also the memorial of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, whose birth bears eternal significance to Christians, as aptly captured by British Christian Author and lay theologian, C.S Lewis: “The son of God became man so that men can become sons of God.”
Conservative individuals and groups in America see the increasing use of “happy holidays” as a part of insidious excessive political correctness and woke culture. American media houses such as Fox News have dubbed this a “War on Christmas”. Global figures including U.S President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been part of this lexical debate, too. On the 2025 Christmas day, Elon Musk posted “Merry Christmas” on X platform, quoting another user who had posted, “You know the world is healing when everyone is saying Merry Christian.”
But what’s in a name (no pun intended), one may wonder! While the adage has always been “actions speak louder than words,” It is also true from a political and communication theory standpoint, that words are as powerful. How a thing/idea is labelled matters. In his book 1984, George Orwell made a case for the power of language as a powerful tool for both control and liberation. “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” he said. He went on to show how totalitarian regimes manipulate language to control reality, among other agenda. It is then unsurprising that global figures like Trump and Musk can shift in their powerful seats because of an apparently innocuous two-word phrase.
Furthermore, conservative Christians hold that “happy holiday” is a deliberate, diversionary attempt to facilitate mass amnesia on the person of Christ; omitting the “Christ” out of “Christmas” while maintaining the hedonistic and material elements, which have endured for millennia. It if it’s true that “Christ is the reason for the season” then “Happy Holidays,” just doesn’t sit fit well: It focuses on the human’s fleeting feelings and experience. This explains why most Christmas Ads and marketing gimmicks that are appeal to our appetites, take the 2024 & 2025 “Holidays are coming Ads” Coca Cola Ads. Nothing about Jesus.
Etymologically, “Christmas” is a shortened, religious-historical compound that translates to “Christ’s mass,” a church service that celebrated the birth of Jesus. The refined phrase historically evolved from Old English (Christes maesse), Latin (Natalis Christi), Greek and Hebrew languages in various forms that space doesn’t permit me to rehearse here.
However, since the advent of the commercialization of Christmas dating back to the 1840s when marketers of the day started to see it as time maximize sales, Christ has further been cancelled from ‘his party’. In the 1940s, a television commercial by Camel, an American brand of cigarettes, portrays mythical Christmas character Santa Claus vending cigarettes.
The 2025 (November- December) annual holiday retail sale forecast released last month by the National Retail Federation, America’s retail trade association, projects a total between $1.02 trillion and $1.02 trillion. In 2024, the reported sales worth $976.1 billion. The curve has been rising for the last two decades since the first forecast in 2005. This upward curve in mass consumption attests to the commercialization of Christmas.
The shows in our December routine: Busy bodies (including those “of Christ”) too lost in frenzied shopping to remember who Christmas is traditionally or theologically about; excessive eating and drinking; drying debit cards; and all the December ‘drama’; not to mention the Mohamed Salah ‘& Co cult’ of matching family pyjama Christmas Photoshoots.
Back home, this paper reported that “people spend a significant portion of their savings during festive season. With strong focus on sales during this time [Christmas season] several individuals indulge in holiday shopping.” Citing a World Remit report titled Cost of Christmas around the World in 2023, Daily Monitor noted that “the largest share of Christmas spending [by families] was on food, with Ugandan (56 percent) and Nigerian (52%);” Kenyans on the other hand reportedly spent 56 percentage of their monthly household income.
“What has my spending got to do with this?” A happy-holiday-reveller may ask. Absolutely nothing. Everyone may spend their money as they please. But that’s not the point I am making. The heart of this matter, is first, the Christians’ concern over the verbal desecration of Christmas, a season meant to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ and the salvation, eternal peace and hope he brings to those who believe and trust in Him.
But wait a moment, has the feast of Christmas as we know it today, ever been sacred? This table is still holding ‘holiday revellers’ drinks, allow me return to dust and, where necessary, shake it, at a later time.
But anyway, in 1647, the English Parliament ruled by Puritans of the day banned Christmas celebrations labelling them as counterproductive pagan practices that promoted sinful feasting and drinking; shops were ordered to stay open, those who closed fined. The ban was only restored 13 years later by King Charles II. Elsewhere in America, in 1659, the Puritan leaders in Massachusetts (then an English Colony) enacted the Penalty for Keeping Christmas law criminalizing such “festivities, which were superstitiously kept in other countries” and were “a dishonour to God and offence to others.” Offenders were liable to a fine. The ban was lifted 21 years later, after intensified debate over the issue, but also notable social behaviour change including many Americans continuing to work and study during Christmas season. This went on until U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant made December 25th, a Federal Public Holiday, in 1870.
Back to the matter- why Ugandans may do well sticking to “merry Christmas”.
The happy-holiday-folks insist their phrase means no harm. It is simply a more inclusive term and it accommodates other end of year holidays and religious diversity. Some of the notable global December holidays include: the Jewish Hanukkah (festival of lights), St. Nicolas Day, The African Americans’ almost weeklong Kwanzaa festival, Boxing Day, New Years Eve, Bahrain National day, etc.
Therefore, it is indeed more “inclusive” and politically correct to say “Happy Holiday,” in this regard. Fair enough. However, for a country of a majority-Christian cultural context (80% of Ugandans identify as “Christians”), “Happy Holidays” is simply pretentious and needless. It’s more irksome and amusing coming from a Ugandan without a single stamp on their passport.
