War on Christmas
Holiday BabyFirst of all I want to thank my comrades in arms in this long winter battle in the ongoing War on Christmas. I took a Season’s Greetings grenade blast in my left leg. But I managed to club a store clerk to death who said “Happy Holidays”
But I’d like to just offer some thoughts on the War on Christmas. Most liberals are now saying “Hey, hey hey! We didn’t declare war on Christmas.”
Here however is the wonderful Andrew Cunningham
This BBC story about the fading English tradition of the nativity play caught my eye. Actually, England might be a bit behind the curve if their authorities are trying to deracinate their children by going to the trouble of entirely banning Christmas. This side of the Atlantic, the preferred tactic is to submerge the holiday in a sea of allegedly analogous festivals of other cultures. A friend was telling me that her kid's class has to celebrate the "season of festivals" by "doing presentations" such vital December traditions as a Korean Doll Festival (the one her unlucky son had drawn from the gender-neutral hat)...in addition, no doubt, to Hanukkah, Kwanza, etc. etc. and, somewhere down the list, the quaint story of a boy born in Bethlehem. So Christmas is not "banned" at all--how could anyone say that? Au contraire, my hysterical rightwing friends your Yule holiday is still very much in the picture, in much the same sense that "Where's Waldo" is. – I,Ectomorph
Exactly. There have been other developments that have raised the consciousness of Christians regarding their situation vis-à-vis their elite masters. Fifty years ago no Christian would have taken offense to “Happy Holidays”. Now that many Christians do is not, as our shocked liberals believe, a vicious political radicalism infecting the right-wing wackos – rather is it that the meaning of “Happy Holidays” has changed. It still does mean “Happy Holidays” but it has been, through the mandates of retail employers, ad campaigns, and general cultural ubiquity come to be the approved, sanitized, politically correct thing to say. Two years ago one of my fellow retail clerks, a Christian by baptism, was offended by my using the word “Christmas” freely with customers. This my friends is not sensitivity - it is a ghetto mentality. Now that the word “Holiday” has been taken to include Kwanza and Hanukkah and New Year’s – it is starting to strike at Christian symbols – we have “Holiday Trees” and “traditional holiday stockings”. You know, like Jews have “Holiday candle-holders.”
There is also the increasing elite consensus that religion is entirely a personal and a private thing – a notion totally at odds with nearly every religious tradition. This consensus leads to a feeling among those who share elite sentiments that explicitly religious themes, ideas and images in the marketplace are somehow shameful or offensive. This mood trickles down and otherwise sane people begin self-censoring.
So liberals are shocked, shocked, shocked that we accuse them of making war on Christmas. Then after they express their dismay at being falsely accused they go on to condescendingly explain to us that the Puritans banned Christmas, as John Stewart did tonight, and Ron Reagan did earlier on MSNBC. The Puritans banned Christmas because they were following their religious faith and imposing their beliefs on the community – not because they held that Korean doll festivals were co-equal with the Lord’s birth. Then they explain to us that Christmas is really a pagan holiday because Christmas trees aren’t in the Bible. I suppose because there are democratic institutions in Washington D.C. (which was just a swamp at our Founding)– the government in the Beltway isn’t really the government of the United States- it’s the government of the Roman Republic. We liberals don’t hate Christmas, we just hate you. We’re not insulting your traditions we are just saying that you have a right to celebrate that totally idiotic, misguided, half-pagan ritual honoring your hateful God.
Tom Piatak, Salon and Andy in the References.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Religion, Culture
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Goldberg dismisses the whole "War Against Christmas" as an exercise in conspiracy-mongering, without offering any explanation for how a holiday celebrated by 96% of all Americans is now so toxic that retailers are afraid to call Christmas ornaments and Christmas stockings by their names. -
There is no War on Christmas. What there is, rather, is a burgeoning myth of a War on Christmas, assembled out of old reactionary tropes, urban legends, exaggerated anecdotes and increasing organized hostility to the American Civil Liberties Union. It’s a myth that can be self-fulfilling, as school board members and local politicians believe the false conservative claim that they can’t celebrate Christmas without getting sued by the ACLU and thus jettison beloved traditions.
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Source: Do They Know It's Christmas?This BBC story about the fading English tradition of the nativity play caught my eye. Actually, England might be a bit behind the curve if their authorities are trying to deracinate their children by going to the trouble of entirely banning Christmas. This side of the Atlantic, the preferred tactic is to submerge the holiday in a sea of allegedly analogous festivals of other cultures. A friend was telling me that her kid's class has to celebrate the "season of festivals" by "doing presentations"
Reader Comments (13)
I'm sorry, I thought our exception to that rule is what made us more successful than everyone else. What differentiated the West from its enemies. Was the root of all our freedom and prosperity.
Mont D. Law
England has an established Church - and nearly conquered the world. The High Middle Ages had a very complex economy.
The industrial Revolution, the cause of the prosperity I believe you intend to defend, was not caused primarily by the privitization of religion but both that Revolution (and it's prosperity) along with the privitization of religion have come at the price of a social anomie some of us have grown tired of enduring.
Secondly, most of us would argue that there is always a public religion - that is to say societies are premised on ideas that cannot be proven but must be accepted as matters of faith. Values like equaltiy, and tolerance cannot be proved at all and in some cases are quite noxious to society - yet we constantly see politicians pay obsesience to these values.
Thirdly, while we may be prosperous - we increasingly lack cultural coherence, the martial values are enervated, as are our wills when it comes to notions like duty, honor and sacrifice. We may have a great many gadgets - but looking at the demographic trends - apparently we no longer have the will to live or reproduce ourselves - and therefore maintain the culture you so admire. Men and nations that do not share the West's values will inherit whatever material benefits outlive Western man.
As for freedom - we've been losing that for a great deal of time too. Formerly heresy against traditional religion can earn social stigma for the heretic - and perhaps bring down legal wrath. Increasingly today, thought itself is being re-criminalized. Our much more religious forebears may not have had a right to an abortion - and most of them were not seeking such anyway, but they didn't have to receive permission from the local government in order to cut down a tree on their property or build a structure on their property. They did not pay property taxes that were so onerous one's property rights were little better than that of a renter's rights under a landlord.These may or may not be terrible developments in themselves - but they certainly restrict freedom.
But what do you mean when you say "freedom"?
http://skellmeyer.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-christians-stole-christmas.html
http://skellmeyer.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-christians-stole-christmas-part-ii.html
T'will be a Merry Christmas indeed. Wonderful post.
Judaism IS tribal, ethnic, and inherited from one's mother. Therefore Judaism is offensive to non-Jews.
All ethnic particularlity is offensive to "moderns" but ethnic particularlism in itself is not offensive to anyone else. Aboriginees would not be offended by Jewish particularlism of itself.
The point I was getting at is that because Judaism is not small-e evangelical and does not claim to be small-c catholic - it is much much less threatening to modern unbelievers than Christianity.
Why not? And how would you know? What makes you an expert on what "aboriginees" think?
Why can't an "aboriginee" or even a just plain aborigine emigrate to Israel and have the same citizenship status as someone whose mother is a certified Jew?
Only philosophical liberals and moderns would want or even conceive of the idea of moving anywhere and being accepted. The reason an aborigine cannot emigrate to Israel and have the same citizenship status as someone whose mother is a certified Jew is because the Jews won't allow it - that's their business. Good for them. It doesn't offend me in the least- and in fact I think the United States should be a bit more discriminating in who we allow to become citizens - it is OUR country.
I think what gets under people's skins is that it seems Jews have argued as liberals in the West- looking for tolerance, open citizenship that is not predicated on enthicity - whereas in Israel they maintain an ethno-religious state. Many Jews themselves struggle with this dichotomy. Some like Paul Gottfried argue that the liberal stance is inconsistent and think Jews should abandon it.Others argue that liberal individualism should dissolve tribal and ethnic loyalty and that therefore Israel should be reformed, abolished, or abandoned. Here at SwD we are not opposed to working in our own self-interest - and we do not hold it against Jews either. And, in anticipation of what may be next - I would also offer that though we reject philosophical liberalism - we do not reject justice - and maintain as well that Isreali self-interest does not justify unfettered abuse or provocation of Palestinians or any foreigner,