A moment of misunderstanding and understanding

A brief incident in the "War on Christmas"

Sometimes a warm greeting is confused with an argument.

Today's post is Herb Rothschild's description of a visit with a stranger at the Costco food tables. It is his story, so let's get directly to it. Herb Rothschild is a retired English professor. He lives in Talent, Oregon. 

Guest Post by Herb Rothschild

In a guest post in Up Close last Thursday, I wrote about Christian Nationalism, which is shorthand for a political demand by a large percentage of our fellow Americans who identify as Christian that U.S. policymakers reinstate the privileged status Christianity enjoyed until it began to erode in the 1960s. At Peter’s urging, today I further develop the topic by sharing a personal experience.

The context of that experience is “the war on Christmas.” I’m not sure who originated the absurd notion that people with the power to do it in were hostile to Christmas, but before COVID struck Fox News folks pushed that notion rather hard. A generalized sense of grievance may be the common denominator of the Fox audience, and the network thrives by providing it with “a local habitation and a name.” For a time--my vague recollection is about two years--the war on Christmas served that purpose.

It was back in the 1960s that a series of federal court rulings banned sponsorship of explicitly religious Christmas displays by municipalities and public schools. So, there was no evidence ready-to-hand that the situation was getting increasingly dire. That was no impediment to Fox folks; they simply manufactured it. One thing they came up with was that “Happy holidays” seemed to be replacing “Merry Christmas” as the favored holiday greeting.

Which brings me to the story Peter liked. In late fall of 2020, I went to Costco for something to do with the hearing aids I had purchased there. When I finished my business, I stopped to eat lunch in the store, because its Polish sausage dog and a soda for $1.50 was the best meal deal in the Rogue Valley.

I sat at one of the communal tables next to a man whom I took to be in his sixties. He was pleasant, and we struck up a conversation. When he stood to leave, I wished him “Happy holidays.” He replied, in a correcting tone, “Merry Christmas.” I then told him that I was a Jew. The effect this information had on him was memorable. Far from becoming combative, he apologized. He said he hadn’t realized that he might be speaking with someone of a different religion.

We humans arrange reality in our minds. Our individual arrangements are largely shaped by what we’ve been told is real by those we trust. For too many of us, our arrangements resist modification by experience. That man had been told by people he regarded as authoritative that there was a war on Christmas, and so he assumed I was part of the attacking army. To his credit, he did a double take. He recognized that I was just being who I am.

If you’ve decided that the Fox audience is “a basket of deplorables,” to borrow Hillary Clinton’s regrettable expression, then let the experience I just shared with you modify that mental arrangement. Our country may be engaged in a struggle for its soul, but you and I will not wage that struggle rightly unless we acknowledge how much of the human we all share--both the tendency to lock ourselves in and the capacity allow our encounters with the Other to free us.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email to to: https://petersage.substack.com Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]