"What does Jesus have to do with you?
You've got as much to do with Jesus as you do with Scooby-Doo
What do you have to do with Jesus?
You have as much to do with him as you do your mother's penis"
You've got as much to do with Jesus as you do with Scooby-Doo
What do you have to do with Jesus?
You have as much to do with him as you do your mother's penis"
A depiction of a religious holiday which centers entirely around its secular trappings, with the actual religion in question not even cropping up casually. In Western media this is primarily applied to the Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter, and occasionally to such Jewish holidays as Hanukkah, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur (as is seen in Shalom Sesame, the Jewish American version of Sesame Street). An especially common feature of Commercialized Christmas, this trope can naturally appear in many other types of holiday-themed works.
This does reflect Truth in Television, as for example there are nowadays plenty of people from Christian cultural backgrounds who are not particularly religious but still celebrate Christmas and Easter with parties and dinners and gifts and candy and decorations, and even some from non-Christian backgrounds who do the same. As you might expect, this secularized version of Christian holiday observance can come in for occasional backlash, from those Christians who see it as undermining the True Meaning of Christmas as well as from those non-Christians who view it as perpetuating Christian cultural hegemony.
In Japan, Christmas was imported as an excuse for local Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises to sell their product as an "authentic" American-style seasonal tradition. It worked spectacularly, and now a country that is 2% Christian has a robust Christmas-based economy, which inevitably means a bevy of Christmas-themed works in Japanese media that have nothing whatever to do with the religious aspects of the holiday. This can be the case even when the characters are Christian-style devils, or the setting involves explicitly non-Christian spirituality.
Compare and contrast Everyone Is Christian at Christmas, in which characters who haven't shown any Christian tendencies throughout the rest of the year suddenly celebrate a Christian holiday. Also compare You Mean "Xmas", which addresses this indirectly by depicting a lightly-fictionalized version of a holiday in a setting where the actual one couldn't be expected to exist, rather than by portraying the real-world holiday without its religious elements.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- In Kamigami no Asobi, the Gods have a Christmas market. Yes, you read that right - the series' Crossover Cosmology cast puts together a Christmas market. Apollo makes melting Santa candles. Yeah.
- Gabriel DropOut: Vignette, a demon, celebrates Christmas with her friend Raphiel, an angel. Raphi reassures her it's okay to celebrate Christ's birth because in Japan it's just a commercial holiday. Satania, another demon, rushes over to Vigne's place for aid in carrying out one of her asinine schemes on the holy day, but they manage to brainwash her into forgetting about it by tempting her with melon bread.
- In Pokémon the Series humans are shown to celebrate Christmas even after God was established to be a Pokémon as well. Early on in the anime Misty is shown using a crucifix to try to repel a Gastly but this can be chalked up to Early-Installment Weirdness.
Comic Books
- The Disney Mouse and Duck Comics mostly avoid any religious elements, Christian or other, in their stories (with just a few exceptions like Duckburg having a prominent church in some stories), so naturally, all their stories about holidays like Christmas or Easter exclusively feature the secular elements like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny without Jesus or Christianity ever being mentioned or the religious meaning of said holidays being discussed.
Comic Strips
- The Christmas strips of Calvin and Hobbes concentrate on Calvin's attempts to behave so that he'll get all the presents he asked for. Semi-averted in one strip that has Calvin doubting the existence of Santa Claus:
Calvin: Why all the secrecy? Why all the mystery? If the guy exists, why doesn't he ever show himself and prove it? And if he doesn't exist, what's the meaning of all this?Hobbes: I dunno... Isn't this a religious holiday?Calvin: Yeah, but actually, I've got the same questions about God.
- It should be noted that, while God is mentioned by Calvin a couple times in the strip, Jesus isn't.
- Besides A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Peanuts newspaper comic averts this on at least one occasion, in a Sunday strip where Linus once again reads the Nativity account from Luke (this time using the Revised Standard translation).
Linus: [after the reading] Like I've said before, that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown!Charlie Brown: You're right.Linus: So who needs Santa Claus?!
Fan Works
- Bait and Switch (STO):
- USS Bajor, commanded by Captain Kanril Eleya, has a 15% Bajoran crew, but even the non-Bajoran crew members are seen taking part in Bajoran religious holidays such as the Day of Remembrance in "To Absent Friends". Also used with Christmas in "Mistletoe On Mirhassa": LTJG. Kate McMillan's father is Reform Baptist, her mother was raised Neo-Norse, and she herself is an atheist; Christmas for her was a way to get her divorced parents to both spend time with her.
- Discussed in passing in "Solaere ssiun Hnaifv'daenn". Jaleh Khoroushi, a Muslim, derisively refers to Christmas as a "Christian holiday that got bastardized by big business centuries ago", and is pleased nobody managed to do that to Ramadan.
Films — Animation
- Downplayed in The Grinch (2018), where some Who carolers singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", explicitly sing the line which mentions Christ.
- In The Nightmare Before Christmas, all the holidays are in their secular forms, though, interestingly, Jack does refer to God offhandedly twice in "Poor Jack".
- On a surface level, played straight in The Polar Express; but Santa Claus is given a more divine presence than usual, and discussions about faith and doubt are clear allegories for those terms as they apply to religion. (Though no specific religion)
- Rise of the Guardians: Among the titular Guardians are Santa Claus a.k.a. North, who is in charge of Christmas, and Bunny the Easter Bunny, who is in charge of Easter. Besides of the mention of the holidays, no religious motives are ever brought up. Bunny even explains that Easter is about "new beginnings", not mentioning Jesus at all.
- Averted with The Swan Princess Christmas. It features more references to Jesus, especially in its songs, than most animated Christmas specials despite being set in a fairy tale land.
Films — Live Action
- Miracle on 34th Street centers around a man who believes himself to be Santa Claus, and his efforts to have himself declared sane in time for Christmas. (While there is a theme relating to the importance of faith, it's not depicted as overtly religious in nature.) The 1994 remake does introduce a couple of religious elements, however.
- Red One: Santa is M.I.A., which means no toy delivery, and by extension no Christmas. Though Santa in this case is explicitly St. Nicholas of Myra, and his yearly route is a celebration of human goodness, leaving enough room for a religious interpretation of the holiday.
- Unsurprisingly, Santa Claus: The Movie makes Santa's toy-delivering mission the heart of the holiday, to the point where a corrupt toymaker imagines he can upstage Santa with his own gift-giving and call it "Christmas II". While the elves have a quasi-religious holiday they call Season's Greetings, it appears to coincide with the winter solstice.
- The Santa Clause portrays Christmas and Santa Claus straight without any implication of the Christian tradition and meaning, being based around Santa's business of delivering toys. When other Holiday Personifications are introduced in the second movie, they all are featured in their secular form (Easter Bunny, Cupid without any mentioning of Classical Mythology, ...).
Literature
- Angelina Ballerina's book Angelina's Christmas focuses on the holiday as a time of gifts, companionship, belief in Santa Claus (complete with Mr. Bell dressing up as such)—and because the series focuses on dancing, a performance of The Nutcracker.
- Believe it or not, A Christmas Carol got criticised for this on its first publication, with complaints that there was only the vaguest mention of Jesus (when Tiny Tim mentions "He who made lame beggars walk and blind men see") and Christmas was mostly presented as being about parties, food and a general sense of goodwill to others.
- The Whos from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! celebrate an evidently non-sectarian (albeit warm, caring and good-hearted) version of Christmas.
- C. S. Lewis wrote a couple of essays highlighting the commercialization of Christmas in the 1950s. In fact, this actually became a subject for concern very soon after the "old-fashioned" Christmas-as-we-know-it was invented in the 19th century, largely as a reaction to the earlier Christmas traditions of getting inebriated, begging door-to-door, and burning stuff.( The main reason for the commercialization was to center Christmas observance in the home and avoid the property destruction that the holiday caused before, which was one reason the Puritans had banned it when they ruled England.) Lewis in one of these essays draws a sharp distinction between Christmas (the religious holiday) and “Xmas” (the secular one).
- The Takedown (2017): Kyla's family celebrate Christmas in a secular manner since her grandmother was vaguely Buddhist and her parents are agnostic.
Live-Action TV
- Our Miss Brooks:
- The several Christmas episodes, on both radio and television, revolve around gift exchanging and spending Christmas eve with loved ones. On other occasions ("Citizen's League", The Movie Grand Finale) church is mentioned in passing, but isn't noted in the Christmas episode. The specials were; "Magic Christmas Tree" (radio and television) "Christmas Show 1952" (television), "Department Store Contest" (radio), "Christmas Gift Returns" (radio), and the "Music Box Revue" (television).
- The two radio-exclusive Easter specials, deal with Easter Eggs (in "Dying Easter Eggs") and Miss Brooks buying a new dress for the Easter Parade (in "Easter Outfit").
- Both averted and played with in The Vicar of Dibley. The title character is obviously well-aware of what Easter actually means, but one of her parishioners (a Cloudcuckoolander) was never told the truth about the Easter Bunny. When the old woman who usually filled this role dies, the vicar has a lot of explaining to do.
- Having a Christmas-themed episode is common in Super Sentai seasons (which are usually nearing the end of their runs around this time).
- Amusingly averted in Knowing Me, Knowing Yule, when Alan attempts to interview the bell-ringers of Norwich Cathedral.
Alan: Christmas, I imagine, a very busy time for bell-ringers?Woman: It is, it's very busy, but it's lovely for us to be able to celebrate, through bell-ringing, the birth of Jesus Christ, our Saviour.Alan: [nonplussed] Fair enough.
- In The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Quill's explanation of Christmas apparently didn't include the Nativity at all, as the aliens' song is based on (a warped understanding of) Santa Claus and secular Christmas songs.
- However, when Drax and Mantis are on Earth later to find Kevin Bacon, they do pass a Nativity scene on the streets of Los Angeles which they spend a few moments looking at.
Music
- Many if not most of the popular Christmas Songs from the 20th century and beyond pretty much ignore the holiday's religious elements in favor of lyrics that revolve around such topics as Santa, snowfall, reindeer, romance, shopping, partying, hippopotamuses
, etc. It's probably no accident that most of these songs were actually written by assimilated Jewish-American composers and lyricists.
Puppet Shows
- In Elmo Saves Christmas, the Easter Bunny sells "Christmas Easter Eggs for Easter". There's nothing religious about any of the episode, whether Christmas or Easter.
Video Games
- Strangely played with in Deltarune: The monsters' religion only bears aesthetic resemblance to Christianity, and may or may not coexist with literal Christianity. Either way, they definitely celebrate Christmas, the Holiday family in particular being themed around it. While only secular aspects are mentioned explicitly (Santa, gift-giving, etc), there is an ambiguous implication that Christmas is a holiday for said religion*, even though it lacks a "Christ" figure.
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner has Decemberween, which is basically Christmas combined with every sort of other winter holiday rolled up into one absurdist ball, with Halloween added for good measure. Just what it even entails is largely unknown, but it's said that it becomes a "Dethemberween" when the Decemberween Thnikkaman says "Shut up" to you, and to a lesser extent, gives you a vast variety of presents, from blank media to discount travel packages.
- Played With in the christmas episodes of Mokey's Show, as Jesus Christ himself repeatedly appears and tries to bring up the fact the holiday is also his birthday. He's usually killed off in those episodes.
Webcomics
- Sluggy Freelance
- When Bun-Bun sets out to become the King of All Holidays, he has to kill the previous leaders of the holidays to gain their titles and powers. To gain control of Christmas and Easter, he kills Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, not Jesus.
- A later arc implied that Santa, Father Time, and one of Halloween's former patrons were originally gods of the ancient civilization of Mohkadun. As was Bun-Bun.
Western Animation
- Peanuts specials:
- While A Charlie Brown Christmas very famously averts this trope, it's played straight with It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown as well as most of the later Christmas specials.
- The Fairly OddParents! paint the Easter Bunny as a disgruntled "hard-boiled" figure who is envious of the big guy's popularity. The 'big guy' being Santa Claus: "Christmas Every Day!" revolved around all the other holiday mascots wanting to banish Santa to the imaginary date of February 33rd.
- Invader Zim: Christmas is focused on Santa, who is revered as a deity by the population.
- South Park:
- South Park plays this straight by making Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo, a Christmas Spirit in the vein of Frosty the Snowman. There is an Easter Episode wherein the secret message behind the Easter Bunny, hidden from you by the evil Vatican, is uncovered. Interestingly this is a world where God, Jesus Christ and Satan are explicitly shown to be real alongside various other religious icons.
- Actually averted in the shorts that preceded the actual show, where Santa Claus and Jesus try to kill each other over who's the real Christmas deity, only to be presented with the message of what Christmas is about. Similarly, a couple of episodes in the main series do allude to the schism between religious Christmas and commercial Christmas.
- The Life and Times of Juniper Lee featured "Juniper's Egg-Cellent Adventure". Here Easter is all about eggs.
- In the Futurama universe, Christmas (which has been renamed Xmas by the 31st century) is less about religion and more about finding a good place to hide from the killer robotic Santa who judges everyone (except Zoidberg!) to be naughty due to his standards being overtuned. That being the case Jesus is real as the Second Coming happened centuries ago, coining the term "Sweet Zombie Jesus"
- The first Rugrats Christmas episode does this, focusing on Santa, but the second averts it: the babies stumble across a Nativity scene and don't understand what it is, but decide to give presents to the baby Jesus. (They never refer to him or the scene by name, so arguably this is more Playing with a Trope.)
- Also Played With during the show's Passover and Hanukkah episodes: the Biblical stories are recounted, but God is never directly mentioned, even though the various miracles occur (non-fatally, in the Passover example—a mysterious force is going to "take away" the firstborn). There was a normal episode of the show based on Noah's Ark that did the same thing, claiming that Noah was just "told by the Heavens" (or something) of the coming Flood.
- This is justified by the fact that Didi and her side of the family are devoutly Jewish, while Stu's side and the other main families don't seem particularly religious; hence why we get retellings of the Biblical stories behind Passover and Hanukkah, but at Christmas we get this trope instead of anything about Jesus.
- The Tick: The Christmas Episode revolves around Santa and Christmas parties, with all the main characters participating. Later in the series one of the main characters is revealed to be Jewish.
- On Family Guy, when Lois discovers that she's Jewish and wants to put on a Passover seder, Peter objects because it's Easter.
"In this house we believe in the Easter Bunny! He died for our sins in that helicopter crash..."
- Exaggerated with Jazmine from The Boondocks. She is so young and naive that she believes Christianity revolves around Santa instead of Jesus and she thinks that Christmas is exclusively about Santa. In A Huey Freeman Christmas, she has a Dream Sequence casting herself as a preacher sermonizing about the good word of Santa, and she later tells Huey the True Meaning of Christmas is to remember that Santa died for our sins, only to return three days later and then move to the north pole to bless us all with eternal presents.
- The Powerpuff Girls (2016) celebrate Generic Tree Lighting Day in place of Christmas in "You're a Good Man, Mojo Jojo." Odd as in the original series, they had a proper celebration of the holiday in "'Twas the Fight Before Christmas."
- The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas: A Christmas parade, toys in a department store and Santa Claus are present in the special but there's no mention of the religious aspects.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: The denizens of underwater Bikini Bottom don't know about Christmas until Sandy (a land squirrel from Texas) tells SpongeBob about it. He gets everyone (except Squidward) in on it, but the there is no mention of Christ and the holiday focuses on stockings, Christmas trees, and most of all, Santa Claus.
- The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! episode "Koopa Klaus" takes place at Christmastime, but only the usual secular elements appear, including King Koopa's eponymous persona. While most of this is justified by the episode taking place at the North Pole, Santa Claus himself (temporarily) cancels Christmas due to his workshop being frozen over, as if the holiday wouldn't exist without him.
- Kaeloo: Played for laughs. Stumpy believes that Christmas is celebrated because Santa Claus was born in a stable and was offered gifts by three wisemen. Kaeloo (who is Ambiguously Christian) awkwardly corrects him by saying that Santa is not the one who was born on Christmas, but does not bother to elaborate on who was.
- Care Bears Nutcracker Suite: The special takes place around Christmas time, and none of the religious aspects are included, with the focus mainly being on toys. The story takes a Saving Christmas slant, as the evil Vizier's attempt to conquer Toyland (which is in another dimension) would lead to Christmas being cancelled should he succeed.
- Averted in the Christmas episode of Jellabies, an otherwise secular series, in which Santa explains to the jellies that the Three Wise Men's gifts to the baby Jesus is why he delivers presents at Christmastime.
Real Life
- Japan at large practices the commercial holiday of Christmas, but only two percent of the population is Christian. Of course, they practice it somewhat differently than everyone else; one of their popular Christmas traditions is eating Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is treated as something of a "special event" delicacy in Japan thanks to KFC's marketing and Japan's lack of turkeys. Urban Legend has it that the image of Santa Claus nailed to a cross has been witnessed in Japan at Christmastime unironically.
- In the Soviet Union, the celebration of the New Year absorbed many elements of Christmas due to the Communist Party banning the latter and (in the 1930s, allegedly at the suggestion of Josef Stalin's daughter Svetlana) using the New Year's Eve to fill the vacuum. Ironically, this resulted in Christmas customs spreading even to those parts of the Soviet Union that were not Christian, such as Central Asia or Tuva. This tradition stuck even after the USSR collapsed and Christianity was legalized once again: in modern-day Russia, Christmas serves as a more solemn, spiritual holiday, while the Christmas tree, the presents and the local version of Santa Claus continue to be associated with the New Year.
- This NPR story describes American Muslims celebrating Christmas, including an amusing anecdote where Iranian-American podcast host Zahra Noorbakhsh said that as a girl she conflated a description of Santa Claus with images in Iranian textbooks of Ayatollah Khomeini. For the record, Islam considers Jesus a prophet of the same line as Muhammad, and The Qur'an has an entire chapter devoted to Mary that includes the nativity narrative. However, Muslims believe that Jesus was a man and do not place a particular importance on his birth, hence the lack of a Christmas tradition.note
- As noted in the trope description, some nonobservant Jewish families celebrate a family gift-giving and love-sharing holiday on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day instead of during Hanukkah, the logic being that one holiday night is easier to arrange than eight—and if you're not religious, which day you do it on is moot anyway. These celebrations may often include Christmas trees and ornaments, Christmas wrapping paper, a turkey feast, and other festive touches that are essentially evoking this trope.
- While some Christians can be heard complaining about Christ being omitted from Christmas, there are also a variety of strict Biblicist denominations which reject the religious observance of holidays like Christmas and Easter. Some (such as the Jehovah's Witnesses) don't celebrate them at all, while others observe them as purely secular holidays.
- Some Wiccans and other neo-pagans regard the popular observance of Halloween as an example of this, as it generally dilutes or discards the holiday's spiritual aspects in favor of purely commercial or festive ones.
- Since religion is not welcome in French public schools, everything Christmas-related there will be about the secular aspects: Le Père Noël, the decorated sapin, the gift-giving, snowflakes, and non-religious Christmas songs like "Jingle Bells".
- While Christmastide in the religious sense extends from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, this is never reflected in pop culture (apart from the carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas”).