As members of Congress head home for the Christmas break, WSJ's Gerald F. Seib lists his big stories to look out for in 2018. Photo: Getty
What Big Stories to Look Out for in 2018 2:48
FOR weeks, US President Donald Trump has been liberally sprinkling his public remarks with Christmas tidings. And then pointing it out in case anyone fails to notice.
Trump has long promised that this year would be different after what he saw as a trend towards giving the Christian celebration short shrift in favour of a more generic and inclusive “Happy Holidays” message.
“Well, guess what? We’re saying Merry Christmas again,” Trump announced in October at a Values Voter Summit of conservatives.
For all of that, though, it turns out the 2017 holiday rhythms at the White House are similar to those of years past.
The president participated in the annual lighting of the National Christmas tree. The house has been decked out for the season with an array of traditional trimmings There has been a whirlwind of parties, including a reception to mark Hanukkah.
The White House holidays under Barack and Michelle Obama also included plenty of Christmas trappings and cheer. Obama offered a more general holiday message on the official greeting card but wished “Merry Christmas” at the National Tree lighting, on his Twitter account and in his weekly address.
Trump has expressed concern about a diminished “Merry Christmas” message for years.
In 2011, he criticised Obama’s approach, saying on Twitter that the president had “issued a statement for Kwanza but failed to issue one for Christmas”.
In fact, that year Obama wished people “Merry Christmas” from his Twitter account and gave a video address with his wife in which he wished people a “Merry Christmas and happy holidays”.
Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton also offered greetings marking Kwanzaa, the week-long African heritage festivities in December. The White House said Trump will also have a statement on Kwanzaa. At the official lighting of the National Christmas tree this year, Trump offered an overtly religious message, noting that “for Christians, this is a holy season”. He added that the “Christmas story begins 2000 years ago with a mother, a father, their baby son, and the most extraordinary gift of all, the gift of God’s love for all of humanity”.
But his predecessor also made remarks grounded in Christian traditions. At his final tree lighting, Obama opened with “Merry Christmas,” and spoke about this being a time to “celebrate the birth of our Saviour, as we retell the story of weary travellers, a star, shepherds, Magi”. He went on to discuss the message of the holiday, saying that it “grounds not just my family’s Christian faith but that of Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, nonbelievers — Americans of all backgrounds.” Trump’s emphasis on Christmas has been welcomed by evangelical Christians who see it as evidence of his commitment to religious liberty.
Trump has begun his year-end vacation at his exclusive golf club and resort in West Palm Beach.
He travelled to South Florida where he will spend the Christmas and New Year’s holidays with his family.
According to the pool reporters accompanying him, the president arrived on Saturday shortly after 9am at the Trump International Golf Club, where he is expected to spend a good part of the day amid warm temperatures and clear skies. Trump landed, along with his wife Melania and their son Barron, on Friday afternoon at Palm Beach International Airport, from where they were taken by car to the Mar-a-Lago club on the Palm Beach coast and where they will spend their first Christmas since moving into the White House.
The president, fresh from notching his first legislative victory in Washington — the passage by the Republican-controlled Congress of his tax reform bill this past week — also spent the 2016 Christmas holiday as president-elect at Mar-a- Lago, some 100km north of Miami.
So far on Saturday morning, Trump has been silent on his official Twitter account, in contrast to Friday, when he hailed the approval of the tax reform bill and backed congressmen Ron DeSantis, who is expected to formally announce his candidacy for Florida governor.
“Congressman Ron DeSantis is a brilliant young leader, Yale and then Harvard Law, who would make a GREAT Governor of Florida. He loves our Country and is a true FIGHTER!” Trump tweeted.
The online media outlet Politico on Friday afternoon reported that Trump met at Mar-a-Lago with Republican senatorial aspirant for Arizona Kelli Ward, whom the mogul is also supporting.
On Friday afternoon, upon his arrival in Palm Beach, the president greeted a group of Jewish supporters who expressed to him their thanks for commuting the prison sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, a top executive for the biggest US meat packing plant convicted in 2009 for money laundering.
According to a report by CNN on Friday, Trump has spent 106 days of his presidency visiting the numerous properties he owns.
He was at Mar-a-Lago on 34 of those days, that location being his favourite leisure spot during the months of January, February and March, according to CNN.
Donald Trump promised to bring "Merry Christmas" back and on his first Noel as president he seems to have done that — and more.
Americans were already in a longstanding debate about whether there was a war on Christmas, but Trump's presidential battle cry about the greeting appears to have made people even more deliberate about what they say in December. And whether that means they feel more liberated, more hesitant or merely in a knot of mental machinations at the moment before a potential greeting exchange, they often all share one common thing, somewhere in their brain: Donald J. Trump.
"Sometimes I feel like saying 'Merry Christmas,' but this is D.C. and I don't want to offend people and I know most people here don't like Trump. He talks about [saying Merry Christmas] a lot," said Steven Abebe, 47, an Uber driver from Arlington, Virginia, who was doing pickups downtown one night earlier this week. Abebe, a Christian originally from Ethiopia, celebrates Christmas and wants to say it. "Now I'm not sure what to say. I try to wait to see what the other person says or does first."
Trump Christmas Brain seems to play out differently from person to person. Some normally on team "Merry Christmas" this year switched — sort of like Abebe — and chose "Happy Holidays" on their family cards deliberately to troll their Trump-loving relatives and friends. Others are busy trying to convince their friends not to let Trump-ism demolish their love of the explicit greeting — and the holiday.
"We're stealing it back," Kenneth Tanner, a 52-year-old Anglican priest from Michigan, exclaimed to a friend on Facebook who said she was worried someone will "mistake me for a Trumpette" if she says Merry Christmas.
"Say what's on your heart! We'll take it back for whatever agenda people have for it. And people have all kinds of agendas for Christmas. Christmas is about God becoming human," Tanner told the Post in an interview. He always says "Merry Christmas." If someone says "Happy Holidays" to him, what does he say? "Thank you."
Matt Lewis, a conservative pundit and writer, said intellectually he thinks Trump's alleged liberation of the holiday is a joke. He makes a point to say: "Isn't it so good that we can now say 'Merry Christmas!'" — in the same way he says "So much winning!" when something involving the government seems messed up — to mock Trump's slogans. Yet Lewis can't help noticing that this year he feels a subtle lifting of whatever anxiety he may have had — but didn't realize — about saying "Merry Christmas."
"I'm not a fan of the way Trump has weaponized this issue and the culture war. But by bringing it up and making an issue and in a way making it laughable, I do think it loosened things up a bit," he said. "It may be [Trump] hits people differently. Someone in another part of the country might see it earnestly. For me it's an ironic thing. We sort of laugh at that because it's absurd that people couldn't say 'Merry Christmas,' but in a way that creates a permission structure to say it!"
Lewis notices himself tacking on a "Isn't it great that we can say 'Merry Christmas?'" after saying it — but he still is saying it more, he says. Trump seems to have made things a little better, Lewis says, "though intellectually I can't tell you why."
The Trump Christmas Effect seems for some to be largely subconscious.
In an episode of Comedy Central's "The Opposition With Jordan Klepper" — a satire of a conservative talk show host — Klepper earlier this month interviewed a woman at a Trump rally in Florida about how the president has improved American life.
"Something that's good for me is we get to actually celebrate Christmas and stuff," she tells him.
"You weren't celebrating Christmas before?" Klepper asks.
"No we do..."
"But you wouldn't get each other gifts," he says.
"Oh, we do that too."
"So what weren't you doing before?" he asks.
"People saying 'Happy Holidays' and stuff..."
"And that was offensive to you," he says.
"No, it wasn't offensive."
"So there wasn't really an issue before...?" he asks.
"No."
"But you feel good now that you can do it?" he says.
"And now [Trump is] just like: 'It's Christmas' and everyone's like: 'OK!'"
"So we can feel good that it's Christmas again?" he asks
"Exactly."
"Even if we never felt any different before?" he asks.
"Right."
"It's still an issue we can claim victory with," he affirms.
"Right, exactly," she says.
For at least the past decade, the percent of Americans who say they don't care what holiday greeting they get in stores has been rising. In 2005, "Merry Christmas" and "doesn't matter" were tied at around 44 percent, according to The Pew Research Center. A few weeks ago 52 percent said "doesn't matter" compared with 32 percent who want the explicit Christmas greeting.
A Quinnipiac University poll out this week found 19 percent of Americans believe the "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" question is a "real issue" compared with 76 percent who believe it was "made up for political purposes." There's a huge age gap in that poll. Of people younger than 34, 8 percent think it's a "real issue" compared with nearly a quarter of people older than 50.
If it feels like the issue is getting politicized, Twitter data analysis seems to bear that out.
According to Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University who analyzes tweets to uncover trends, tweets with the phrase "Merry Christmas" are much more political than "Happy Holidays" tweets. For instance, tweets with "Merry Christmas" are nine times more likely to mention Trump, Burge said. And the phrase "Merry Christmas" is also much more likely to be connected with the words "America," "tax" and "GOP."
Using sentiment scoring in a tool called Natural Language Processing, there were about 3,000 tweets he analyzed with "Happy Holidays" that were considered negative, while closer to 30,000 with the same phrase were considered positive. "Merry Christmas" had about 4,000 negative tweets, compared with 30,000 that were positive. That still means both terms are considered very positive, Burge said. "Merry Christmas" appears far more often than "Happy Holidays."
