Some Christians including Peadar Tóibín TD want Dublin City Council’s Winter Lights to be renamed Christmas Lights.
This is not about people changing a religious festival to a secular one. It is about some Christians trying to force a religious meaning onto a secular display of art projects.
There’s no problem using the word ‘Christmas’ in a secular sense. We can say ‘Goodbye’ without meaning ‘God be with you’ and we can do things on Thursday without celebrating Thor.
It would also be okay for the City Council to use the word Christmas in a secular sense. That would only be a problem if the Council was overtly pushing religion during a secular festival.
It’s also a problem that the State funds the Catholic church to run our schools, and makes the President swear a religious oath, and that RTÉ broadcasts a Catholic call to prayer every day at prime time.
But that’s not what is happening here. This is what the issue is:
- Dublin City Council has organised The Dublin Winter Lights since 2018. It’s never been called Christmas lights.
- It’s a series of interactive light installations, artwork projections, landmarks and city-centre experiences, with no reference to religious worship or faith communities.
- It’s not about Christmas, but about winter, which is dark and suitable for light displays. And it’s not just for Christians, but for everybody, regardless of their religious or nonreligious beliefs.
- The traditional Christmas lights are still operating, and still run through the DublinTown business levy. Dublin Winter Lights is a separate project that lights up bridges and landmark buildings.
Evolution of the secular word Christmas
Traditions evolve over time, and part of the tradition of Christmas today is debating whether the word ‘Christmas’ is religious or secular.
- Long before Christianity, Pagans and Norse had midwinter festivals to celebrate the turn of the seasons and rebirth of life.
- Three centuries after Jesus, Christians decided to celebrate his birth on the same date as these winter festivals, to help people to convert more easily.
- The word ‘Cristes Maesse’ was first used in Old English around the eleventh century, and became ‘Christmas’ around the sixteenth century.
- In the western world, the tradition of giving gifts also started around then, followed by Christmas cards around the nineteenth century.
- In the 1930s, Coca Cola rebranded Santa Claus as a plump red-suited man with a white beard.
In Ireland today, ‘Christmas’ now has two meanings:
- Some Christians primarily celebrate what they believe to be the birth of Jesus.
- Most people celebrate a secular mid-winter break where we meet family and exchange gifts.
What matters is what happens, not the word
It’s not a problem for the City Council to use the word Christmas in a secular sense. There would only be a problem if the Council was overtly pushing religion during a secular event. Examples of such problems in Ireland include:
- The state funding the Catholic church to run nearly all of our primary schools, with exemptions from our equality laws to allow them to discriminate.
- The state forcing the President, judges, and Taoiseach to swear a religious oath to take office. There is nothing secular about asking God to direct and sustain you.
- RTE broadcasting the Angelus, which is an explicitly Catholic call to prayer, on prime time television every day.
But this issue is the opposite of that. It is some Christians trying to force a religious meaning onto a secular display of art projects.
The video below is John Hamill and I discussing the issue on Newstalk Radio yesterday. Happy secular Christmas!