Merry Christworshipservic

After a weekend away from First Conservative Evangelical Church, having been away to visit family, Fred showed up to work the week before Christmas absolutely thrilled about something and waiting for a break to chat with his fundy friend Frank.

“You’ll never believe the great thing God is doing. You probably already know, though. Did you see the news last night? Some Christian Coalition leaders were on the TV talking about how they boycotted any store that said ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas,’ and so all these stores are using ‘Merry Christmas’ again. Isn’t that great?”

Fred was talking a mile a minute. His new-found fundamentalism was getting a big hold on him, and the folks at church kept referring to him as being “on fire.” When someone first told Fred that, he actually stopped, dropped, and rolled, until someone explained to him that it was a figure of speech. “I remembered Pastor Funk’s sermon from two weeks ago about keeping ‘Christ’ in ‘Christmas,’ and I thought that this was a really big victory for Christmas!” He looked at Frank with an expression that said he was expecting a full agreement.

But Frank shuffled his feet and looked at the floor. Finally, he said, “Well, you missed church this past week.  And Pastor Funk said that he was praying last week and that the Lord told him that we shouldn’t call it Christmas, because the M-A-S in Christmas refers to the Catholic mass, and the Catholic mass is evil.”

Fred’s face dropped; he was stunned. “So…what are we supposed to call it, then?”
“Well, the Catholics have mass, and we have a worship service…uh…so, we’re calling it, Christworshipservic. And you gotta drop the ‘e,’ ’cause in Christmas, the last ’s’ is dropped.” Frank looked away again.

“Oh…” Fred was entirely downcast.  “Um…so, without the ‘e,’ do you pronounce it with a hard ‘c’ sound or a soft?”

“Soft,” Frank replied.

“But that doesn’t make any grammatical sense,” Fred replied, his indignance growing.

“Are you going to submit the principles of God to modern grammar?” Frank retorted.

After a long, awkward pause, Fred quietly asked, “So it can’t ever be called Christmas again?”

“Not unless you want to take part in the works of Satan,” Frank replied.

Another long pause ensued. Fred did not want to take part in the works of Satan, but he highly doubted that changing “Christmas” to “Christworshipservic” would catch on. “Alright,” he finally conceded. “So…got all your Christma…I mean, Christworshipservic shopping done?”
“Can’t,” Frank replied.

“Can’t? Why not?”

“Well, since the word ‘Christmas’ is clearly evil, Pastor Funk said we needed to boycott any store that uses the term ‘Merry Christmas.’ ‘Course, the ironic thing is that the Christian Coalition’s boycott means that every store has ‘Merry Christmas’ on its windows again. So no one from the church can do their Christworshipservic shopping this year.”

“Oh, this is just ridiculous!” Fred blurted out, but then remembered the works of Satan and instantly apologized.

After another long pause, Frank finally said, “It’s probably all for the better anyway. Christmas had all those pagan origins and all.”

“Yeah…” Fred responded. “Well…Merry Christma…Christworshipservic. See you Sunday for the…um…Christworshipservic service.”

And for the first time since that revival meeting, Fred began to doubt this whole thing. And though Fred did not know it, Frank too was beginning to doubt the teachings of Pastor Funk. Fred resolved to schedule a meeting with Pastor Funk, and Frank began flipping through the phone book, looking for other churches in the area.
And, happily, by the end of the week, both of them decided to celebrate a real, Merry Christmas with their families, without telling Pastor Funk. They finished up their shopping together in a city 2 hours away, and they celebrated the birth of Christ with Christmas trees and all.