There has been a disturbing trend going on at this time every year. Last year and in years past, it had only lurked in the background, by and large being correctly generic. But this year, it seems many of the pretenses have been ignored, and the conspicuous absence of the correct term is both disturbing and annoying.

By what seems to be a mutual agreement, everyone in the media is walking around afraid to say the C-word.

Christmas.

In the past, in attempts to be inclusive, there was the referral to “the holidays” or “the holiday season,” implying more than one. That’s OK. But in a variety of places, when the packaging, Santa and all, indicates a referral to one of those specific holidays, it is being referred to as just “Holiday.”

The lead to an article in Tuesday’s USA Today is a perfect example of this awkward construction:

“Expect Santa’s sleigh to be heavy with DVDs this season. With DVD players now in 50 million U.S. homes, retailers are aiming at the family market this holiday.”

“This holiday.” The phrase grates on the ears. In the five paragraphs of the short article, reference is made to “season,” “holiday,” “holiday season,” and “seasonal product.” The only appearance of “Christmas” is in the titles of the various DVDs — all of which had to do with Christmas.

Could this be written off as a simple synonym replacement? Perhaps, but that would require the word to be a good synonym in the first place, and the strange way it rolls off the tongue in this sentence doesn’t make it one. It would be easier to ignore if it were the only example. However, there is plenty of the same around. Consider the following:

* A commercial for PetSmart starts out with a couple decorating a tree, which is quite obviously a Christmas tree, and the wife says it’s their pet’s “first holiday.” What, the dog wasn’t around for Thanksgiving?

* Two Cedar Rapids radio stations duking it out for seasonal song supremacy, WMT-FM (96.5) and KDAT-FM (104.5), run tags saying they’re “your holiday music station.” So does KLTI-FM (104.1) in Des Moines. No, I’m sorry, but the three different renditions of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and the rest of the playlist, without reference to any other holiday, make them Christmas music stations.

* An ad for Kay Jewelers in USA Today a few weeks back started out with the words “This Holiday” with the H capitalized, as if it were a proper noun. When it looks like that, it’s not just a simple typographical error.

* One of the trailers on the “Santa Clause 2” DVD was for a new Disney video based on “Lilo and Stitch.” For the release date, it said “Holiday 2003.” That’s it.

Any one of those above items might not be serious, but taken together, it has all the signs of an epidemic. They aren’t talking about “the holidays,” plural. They aren’t talking about “the holiday season.” They are consciously substituting a bland non-specific word and passing it off as attempting to be inclusive, or at least inoffensive.

No, Virginia, there is no “Christmas.” The baby Jesus has been sacrificed not only to the deity of commercialism but to that of political correctness. At the rate things are going, we’ll be lucky if the worst editing done to “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is the current hack job ABC does by putting commercials where they were never meant to be. If the animators wanted to begin creating that show now, and have Linus tell us what Christmas is all about, would the project ever get off the ground, or would we have to endure “A Charlie Brown Holiday”?

There is a fine line between inclusiveness and political correctness for political correctness’ sake, and it has been crossed this year. It was one thing for places like Iowa State to substitute long-held Christmas celebrations to names like “Festival of Lights” and to call those decorated evergreens “holiday trees.” It is another for the media to deck the halls with red and green, to have all the trimmings and trappings associated with the Christian celebration, and then call it “holiday.”

Yes, there are other religions holding celebrations around this time. Yes, those celebrations deserve to be recognized. But at no other time are those names being corrupted or completely axed in favor of a word that carries multiple connotations. With the illustrations above, and myriad others that point to one celebration and one only, incorporation of that word into both news and advertising is nothing more than a politically correct maneuver to evict the name of Christ from the holiday that celebrates his birth.

When talking about preparing for Dec. 25, call it like it is. It has its own name. Don’t backtrack and go bland for fear of someone singling you out for saying the C-word.