Tom Flynn (author) - The Trouble With Christmas

The Trouble With Christmas

In this book Flynn summarized the history of the holiday from an atheist perspective; argued that the Santa Claus myth is harmful for child development; and urged atheists, secular humanists, and other nonreligious Americans to push back, at the same time making themselves more visible during the Christian holiday season, by refusing to celebrate all aspects of the holiday, religious or secular. The book received ongoing media attention; in 1994, Flynn was the only on-screen expert in A&E Network's first Biography segment on Santa Claus who was not a Greek Orthodox priest. he was billed onscreen as a folklorist. His critique was still controversial in 2007, when editor Dale McGowan published a point-counterpoint debate on the Santa Claus myth in his handbook for nonreligious parents, Parenting Beyond Belief: on Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion. Flynn argued that early immersion in the Santa myth predisposed children to accept absurd religious teachings in later life; McGowan argued that the discovery that the Santa myth was untrue prepared children to reject religious dogmas in later life. Both agreed that the subject demanded further research by the child-development community.

Speaking to Point of Inquiry host Robert M. Price about the putative "War on Christmas," Flynn states that retailers have found "there is a lot more religious diversity... a lot of people with money to spend that aren't Christians." Therefore retailers changed from greeting customers with "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays," to the disapproval of conservatives. He added that as "the Christian dominance of the culture continues to decline, there's going to be a little more emphasis or openness to the idea that some people are doing other things on December 25th".

Flynn told D.J. Grothe on Point of Inquiry that he does not hate Christmas. He stopped celebrating the holiday in 1984 and has found that it is very difficult to escape from. "What struck me... was how arrogant society was with promoting this holiday. There is a lot of pressure... put on people who do not feel this is 'their holiday', we shove it down everybody's throats." Flynn's goal is to raise consciousness and persuade the "Christian majority to live and let live". Currently, most Christians "strongly demand that everyone pay lip-service to their sectarian birthday holiday."

The book's beginnings came from an installment of a column in the Secular Humanist Bulletin in 1992. The essay attracted national media attention including more than a score of local and national radio reports during the 1992 holiday season. It was as a consequence of this publicity that Prometheus Books offered Flynn a contract for the book.