To Christmas Tree, Or Not To Christmas Tree...

We're now full-tilt into the Christmas season (well, three months in if you follow the retailer's timeline), and maybe you'd like to do something on your site in recognition of the time of year. It's a pretty common practice, and anyone who visits Google on a daily basis can tell you that a minor change, like a logo modification, is noticed by a lot of people. It makes a site seem less cold to know that there's a person who's paying attention behind the scenes.

However, if you're going to make these types of changes, we also have to remember to avoid the Christianeze. We should be trying to do this on our sites to try and make a welcoming place for non-Christians to visit, but this time of year we can apply this to the images we use on our site as well.

For example, there are Christians who feel that images of Christmas Trees should not be used because they have pagan origins, and would not want to place them on the church's website. However, the Christmas Tree is a long-standing part of the traditional Christmas celebration in most households, and someone who was raised celebrating "Christmas" in a non-Christian household could easily perceive the church as being elitist. When we are working to promote an atmosphere of love, being elitist is not an image we want to perpetuate. However, these "comfortable" images should also be included among the more "Christian" images of the nativity, to make sure that the spirit of the season is not lost completely on a visitor.

So this Christmas season, if you plan on making a seasonal design change to your site, try to take time to think about how it reflects upon your church in the community. Make sure you're sending the message that you mean to!