In the prologue to John’s gospel this Christmas Day, John the Baptist is sent from God to give testimony to the light “so that all might believe through him.” It seems the light is fading on the Christmas story, at least from a religious perspective. While 9 in 10 Americans will celebrate Christmas in some form this year, a new poll shows that increasing numbers see the holiday in social and commercial terms rather than religious ones.

More than ever, Americans prefer that stores and businesses welcome them with the more generic “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings” than “Merry Christmas,” according to a survey released December 17 by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in partnership with Religion News Service. One in four American adults (26 percent) now see December 25 as simply a cultural holiday, not a religious holy day.

“The trend is in that direction, for sure,” said Robert Jones, C.E.O. of PRRI. The percentage of people who say the Bible’s Christmas story is historically accurate has fallen more than 17 percentage points since a 2004 survey reported by Newsweek.

Why the shift toward a more secular Christmas? One reason, Jones said, is that a decade ago many more people identified as evangelicals, who tend to see the holiday in more religious terms. Today, self-identified evangelicals are down to 18 percent of the population—outnumbered even by the 20 percent who say they have no religious identity at all, Jones said.

The new survey finds a preference for the “Merry Christmas” greeting—perhaps the most contested cultural turf in the so-called “War on Christmas”—to be a marker of a person’s religion, politics, and age: Nearly half of Americans (49 percent) say they choose a nonreligious December greeting “out of respect for people of all faiths,” up from 44 percent in a 2010 survey by PRRI.

As for the under-30 crowd, you can skip the religious greeting, said 66 percent of young adults. “They didn’t grow up with a stigma attached to being unreligious,” Jones said.

Homily hint: Perhaps the decline in the religious observance of Christmas is not only a sign of people's increasing secular point of view but also in part a reaction to the trivialization of the holiday; why wish someone "Merry Christmas" when so few are acting as if they believe it? In the words of Katherine Martin's PrepareTheWord sample homily for Christmas Day, welcome those in church, "from Sunday regulars to infrequent visitors" and encourage them: "Tonight when say to each other, 'Peace be with you,' let us mean it with our whole hearts, and let us carry that peace offering outside these church walls. Then we can truly share in the words of the psalmist: 'All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.' "

Source: An article by Cathy Lynn Grossman for Religion News Service