Christmas edges back to America

By Jane Little
BBC News, Washington

It is the season for the annual battles that have been dubbed "the Christmas wars".

Festive decorations are as big and bright as ever in New York

They are usually associated with America, which has a constitutional separation of Church and state - and a constant negotiation over what that separation means.

And, right on cue, from city halls to malls to school classrooms, there are disputes over the public display of symbols linked to the Christian festival.

This year, the talk shows seized upon a decision by the airport authorities in Seattle to remove all Christmas trees because a Jewish rabbi threatened to sue them if they did not also display a Menorah - a candelabra associated with the Jewish festival of Hannukah that coincides with the Christmas season.

There was an outcry, the rabbi insisted he never wanted the trees removed, and they were replaced when the lawsuit threat was withdrawn.

Ironically, the Christmas tree, which comes from pre-Christian Pagan tradition, has nothing to do with the Nativity story of the birth of Christ.

But such facts do not get in the way of a heated battle over the soul of the nation.

One side argues that this is about religious liberty in a Christian country, the other that the Founding Fathers were careful to enshrine the separation of Church and state to prevent sectarian strife and to ensure that no religion should have special privilege.

Pope speaks out

Yet while the most heated debates take place in the US, Americans do not have a monopoly on the Christmas wars.

Hollywood has marked the season with a Christmas Parade

They are also becoming common in Europe, where in places like Britain, there have been mounting concerns about an "attack" on Christmas.

There are more stories than ever this year about local councils "banning" Christmas, schools refusing to put on Nativity plays, and complaints that Christmas cards are now devoid of any religious content.

And clergy continue to express anxiety about the rampant consumerism at this time, with hordes taking to the shops on London's Oxford Street to spend, spend, spend.

Now Pope Benedict has added his voice to the disquiet, telling pilgrims and tourists at his last weekly audience before Christmas that they must defend its true spirit.

He warned them that "false prophets continue to offer cheap salvation which ends in deep delusions".

The Pope's main concern is that secularisation is emptying Europe of its soul, that a Christian continent is losing ground to a wishy-washy "anything goes" morality or, in the Pope's famous words on the eve of his election last year, a "dictatorship of relativism".

The battle over Christmas is in fact connected to others over religious symbols which have become so prevalent - and so loaded - over the past year: from an employee's fight with British Airways which banned her from wearing a cross around her neck, to wider campaigns over a Muslim woman's right to wear a headscarf or full face covering.

Essentially, it is all part of a complicated negotiation over the meaning of a secular public square and an attempt to come to grips with a changing, more pluralistic society.

But the danger is that secular authorities, out of a fear of offending one group, end up offending almost everyone. They may regulate so much that all that is left is a grey mushy square so inoffensive and so utterly expressionless.

Christmas returns to US

Perhaps there is a dawning realisation of that in the United States, the very place that invented political correctness.

In recent years, public companies have preferred to play it safe and to wish their employees and customers an inoffensive "happy holidays".

But this year, Christmas has made something of a comeback.

It may well be due to a feeling that religion - in this case Christianity - got too squeezed out of the public realm.

Or perhaps it is because the society is now more secure in its pluralism - it feels more confident in allowing space for a diversity of religious expression.

Whatever the reason, shoppers are being wished a "merry Christmas", the stores apparently confident that such greetings will not drive them out of the door empty-handed.