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By Dan Berry

Have you ever taken a child to a big amusement park, become distracted, momentarily forgotten that you are supposed to be the adult and suddenly experienced an adrenaline jolt when you look around and don't see him?

This happened to me recently when I though I lost Christmas.

Perhaps I'm the last to catch on, but I just noticed that Christmas is conspicuously absent this year, so I started looking around.

This year, the day after Halloween rang in the holiday season -- whatever that is. The national retailers started heavily advertising holiday gifts, holiday lights and holiday parties. Apparently, all the part-time workers received the same directive to substitute "Happy Holidays!" for "Merry Christmas!" Even a local school sent out its notice that the "Winter Parties" were scheduled for Dec. 20. A radio talk-show host warned his audience that he was about to use the "C" word. A school district in another state canceled a field trip to see Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" because the administration said it has religious overtones. This followed a report from last year that an Oregon school district ordered its faculty to substitute "the evergreen" in place of "Christmas tree" anywhere it appeared.

Fear not, for behold, Christmas is not gone.

For public institutions, Christmas is a matter of constitutional law. The proponents of abolishing the recognition of Christmas on public property persuaded the courts that displaying Christmas symbols somehow amounts to the United States establishing Christianity as the nation's official religion. Some courts tossed a bone to those who want to continue to put up Christmas decorations on public property by differentiating between secular symbols and religious symbols. It is OK to display some traditional Christian symbols such as a nativity scene if they are offset with enough non-Christian symbols such as Santa Claus, elves, reindeer, snowmen, a menorah and a Christmas tree. For the private sector, Christmas is a matter of good old American capitalism. As far as corporate America is concerned, the money is still green whether it is spent by atheists, Christians, Muslims, Jews or vegetarians. They simply don't want to make any group feel left out, so they have drunk themselves silly with political correctness.

I'm beginning to wonder if the al-Grinch terrorists sneaked over here one silent night and bombed us with Christmas phobia. So far this year I have received only one greeting card containing the word "Christmas." Everyone else sent a generic holiday greeting, except one intellectually honest person who simply wrote "Happy New Year."

I'm no doctor, but I do have some suggestions for those of us who -- having once enjoyed a happy childhood filled with spider bikes and banana seats, Slinky, bathrobed shepherd costumes, Easy-Bake Ovens, tinsel-draped choir robes, Matchbox cars, Andy Williams and Christmas Eve worship -- have contracted Christmas phobia and the amnesia associated with it.

1. Those of us who celebrate Christmas do not have to be reminded that it is a holiday.

2. Omitting the word "Christmas" won't make it something else.

3. Christmas, Hanukkah and Ramadan are not generic equivalents. Each is a distinct and separate religious observance based on the Christian, Jewish and Islamic calendars.

4. It is linguistically impossible to secularize the word "Christmas."

5. Santa Claus comes on Christmas Eve except in certain time zones when it is in the wee hours of Christmas morning -- and depending on whether or not he leaves the Lincoln Logs in the can or actually takes time to build something.

6. Tradition has it that evergreen branches symbolize things that live forever, which is synonymous with eternity and infinity, things that have a God-like quality.

7. Tradition has it that lights on the Christmas tree started when Martin Luther stuck candles on his tree. The smoke detector was invented shortly thereafter.

8. Christmas was named because it celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Renaming it "Season's Greetings" doesn't change its essential character.

9. If it appears there is an overwhelming Western European influence in America, that is because this part of the world was settled by English, Spanish, French and other European explorers and settlers. They had a big head start on everyone else who came later. William Penn, the Quaker, bough a huge chunk of real estate for his "holy experiment" where people of all races and creeds could live together in the City of Brotherly Love. That experiment is still going on.

10. A 2001 religion survey conducted by the City University of New York found that 81 percent of the adult population identifies with one religious group or another, and 77 percent of the population classifies themselves as Christian. This may help account for the fact that Christmas colors don't fade easily.

What a relief it was to find Christmas just when I thought it was lost in the crowd.

Dan Berry of Cape Girardeau is a lawyer.