Happy…Holidays? - Opinion

Ben Tulmuty, Ireland - Writer

Every December, American campuses manage to turn the most unmistakably Christian holiday on the calendar into something vague enough that nobody can object to it. The result is a season that feels strangely hollow. Schools, including GW, bend over backwards to talk about “winter celebrations,” “happy holidays,” or whatever new phrase is considered safest, but they tiptoe around the obvious: Christmas is a religious holiday, and pretending otherwise strips it of everything that makes it meaningful.

You don’t have to be a theologian to notice the disconnect. Students are surrounded by decorations, themed events, and cheerful messaging, yet almost none of it acknowledges what the holiday actually is. A campus might put up lights, host a “winter market,” or plan a “festive gathering,” but they avoid admitting the word Christmas carries a specific heritage, a specific meaning, and yes, a specific faith. The result is a cultural performance that celebrates everything except the reason the holiday exists in the first place.

Coming from Ireland, where Catholicism shaped Christmas long before it became commercial, the difference stands out immediately. Even people who haven’t been inside a church in years understand Christmas as something grounded in belief, not branding. You don’t have to agree with every teaching to recognize that the holiday loses its shape when you remove the faith behind it. On many American campuses, it has been reduced to an aesthetic, to please a select group of people, including our former Vice President, who famously urged us not to speak the words “Merry Christmas.”

The irony is that universities constantly talk about authenticity and inclusion, yet this is one area where authenticity goes missing – Christianity. If a holiday is religious, let it be religious. Acknowledging Christmas as a Christian holiday doesn’t exclude anyone, rather it is a basic fact. It simply tells the truth about where the traditions come from and why the day matters. 

In my own personal experience, it seems my virtue-signalling housemates are painstakingly skirting around the words Christmas, renaming Secret Santa to a “holiday gift exchange,” and scrubbing away the traditional aspects, which doesn’t make the season more welcoming. It just makes it conceptually incoherent.

Most students aren’t offended by the idea of Christmas being, well, Christmas. They can handle the fact that the West’s most celebrated holiday comes from a faith tradition. They already know it. When everything is softened, edited, and rephrased, it becomes hard to take seriously, and a sinister element emerges, where a day with two thousand years of history is reduced to a secular, one-size-fits-all holiday.

The real strength of Christmas is that it still carries a sense of grounding in a culture that often feels rootless. The message about hope, dignity, and the birth of Christ is clear, even for those who don’t personally practice. It’s a reminder that certain ideas have shaped civilization long before the modern university decided what was “appropriate.”

If Christmas is going to exist on campus at all, it should exist honestly, and those in charge need to acknowledge reality: the holiday derives its meaning from the faith that created it. If anything, they are revealing more about their discomfort with heritage and good, moral values than about students’ supposed sensitivities. What is there to be afraid of?