Traditional Protestants take a dim view of the Judaic echoes in Catholic Christianity. The Mass is especially scandalous to them, given its ambiguous relationship to Temple sacrifice, which has been superseded by Christ’s shedding his blood on Mount Calvary — that’s the theology, anyway. I won’t rehearse here the ancient bitter arguments of church against synagogue and, later, of Reformers against Rome but will only point to the irony of being pure in your Protestantism while insisting that everyone recognize “Christ-Mass” by that name.
A few people who avoid saying “Merry Christmas” may do so out of scruples passed down to them from John Knox, but these days that’s rare. More common, sad to say, is the fear that public acknowledgment of a holy day peculiar to a particular religion will be interpreted as a dog whistle to imaginary theocrats plotting to overturn the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Some people outright hate the particular religion and therefore any proper nouns that are sacred to it; although the separate elements of “Christ-mas” are muddled when glued together in that composite, they’re still discernible, and those who loathe the faith tend to be rigorous, no less than those who hold to the narrower doctrine of strict religious neutrality.
Christian, let it be. Remember Joseph in Egypt, addressing his brothers who sold him into slavery: “You intended evil against me, but God turned it into good.” Throughout Scripture, God stresses his regard for our intentions, the content of our hearts, and calls out discrepancies between what we hold there silently and what we profess with our mouth. He urges us to watch our words perhaps because he appreciates better than we do their independent power, which no amount of mental reservation or finger-crossing can undo.
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