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The Trouble With Christmas demonstrates that America's most popular holiday is not for everyone. Author Tom Flynn slays America's most popular sacred cow by arguing that Jews and atheists tolerated Christmas too passively solely in exchange for social acceptance. Members of faster-growing religious minorities will be less accommodating. Flynn believes that Christmas traditions must be redefined. He probes the festival's largely non-Christian origins, dissects the Nativity myth, delves into the legend of St. Nicholas, and frankly discusses his own experiences in giving up the holiday. Despite ancient roots, Flynn argues that the modern-day Christmas celebration is a very recent development, primarily the work of a half-dozen modern Victorian Anglophiles. Perhaps most controversially, he re-opens inquiry into the Santa Claus myth and concludes that belief in Santa harms the young.
Christmas confrontations in schoolrooms, city halls, and public parks will worsen, Flynn warns, until we abandon our preoccupation with Christmas as a universal feast. Down-sizing the holiday would come as a relief to Christians and non-celebrants alike.
Tom Flynn (Amherst, NY) is editor of Free Inquiry and the author of Galactic Rapture and Nothing Sacred.