BlogWood: MT Archives

The reason for the season?

One word: Solstice.

This kind of crap is getting very tiring.

With slogans like ''He's the Reason for the Season'' and ''Bring Jesus back to Christmas,'' Christian activists are taking up an old battle with renewed energy this holiday season. Emboldened by the heavy turnout of ''values'' voters on Election Day, Christian organizations are lobbying businesses, schools and towns to include Christian symbols and messages in holiday displays.

''We are concerned about the secularization of Christmas,'' said David Zachary, the director of operations for South Florida's Christian Coalition. ``They don't seem to have a problem with the commerce; they seem to have a problem with the fact that it's Christ we're celebrating.''

Church-state separationists say the conflict has reached an unprecedented pitch this year, citing record complaints about sectarian religious displays.

''Some of these religious right groups have decided the last presidential election had something to do with their entire agenda, including putting up nativity scenes,'' said the Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. ``They're turning a time of peacefulness into a combat zone.''

LAWSUITS

But other Christian leaders say substituting ''Happy Holidays'' for ''Merry Christmas'' or displaying Christmas trees instead of a créche degrades the holiday's significance. Threatening lawsuits, store boycotts and protests, Christians across the country are fighting to inject religious values into the public sphere.

In California, a group called the ''Committee to Save Merry Christmas'' has called for Christians to boycott Macy's, Burdines and other Federated department stores, complaining the store banners should read ''Merry Christmas'' instead of ``Season's Greetings.''
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Federated has offered generic holiday greetings for the past 20 years to recognize religious diversity, said company spokeswoman Carol Sanger.
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But Christian groups say the ''anti-Christian agenda'' has gotten worse this year, citing Target's decision to keep the Salvation Army out of its stores, public schools banning Christmas cards and carols, and stores dropping references to Christ.
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''There's a small, radical, committed group of people looking to strip the nation of its religious underpinning,'' said Gary Cass, director of the Center for Reclaiming America.

``There's an attempt . . . to create the impression that Christmas is harmful.''

These stories about how members of this nation’s dominant faith are somehow being unfairly treated by the minority are popping up everywhere.

A few days ago Bill O'Reilly was yammering on about how he was sticking up for Christmas but nobody else was. Why doesn't Peter Jennings stick for Christmas, he asked, why doesn't Dan Rather stick up for Christmas....and....and....well, that's about it. I didn't have any idea what he was talking about, so I shrugged my shoulders and went about my business.

But now a week has passed, and I think I get it. It's all about "Merry Christmas," isn't it? I've now read at least a dozen assorted articles and op-eds about the horror — the horror! — of "Happy Holidays" being used as a seasonal greeting instead of "Merry Christmas."
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Don't believe me? A quick Nexis search shows that in just this weekend alone the MC vs. HH issue has been written up in the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Herald, the Akron Beacon Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, the London Telegraph, the Tallahassee Democrat, the Arizona Republic, Newsday, the Winnipeg Sun, the Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. And that's not counting letters to the editors, jokes, or stuff I missed because I only read the Nexis summary instead of the entire article.

James Wolcott also notes the trend.

Every year we hear the eloquent whines of the "put Christ back into Christmas" chorus. Every year without fail we're told that Christmas itself has become a charged phrase, un-PC, fudged with euphemism. I'm not sure how we could put any more Christ into Christmas this year. Jesus was on the cover of Time and Newsweek, US News ran a cover story on The Power of Prayer, CNN is broadcasting a documentary tonight on "The Two Marys" (Madonna and Magdalene), and Mel Gibson's The Passion is at the red hot center of so many year-end roundup essays. ......

This "fear of Christmas" is a phantom menace conjured every year so that certain crybaby Christians can adopt victim status and model a pained expression over the sad fact that not everyone around them isn't carrying on like the Cratchits. This thin-skinned grievance-collecting gives birth to all sorts of urban legends and rumors about big institutions being hostile to Christ's birthday, such as the one that swirled on WOR radio last week about how Macy's employees had been instructed not to say "Merry Christmas!" to shoppers. A fiction that was put to rest when the host hit Macy's website and saw its "Merry Christmas" greeting, and Macy's employees chimed in over the phones to say there was no such policy. To read conservative pundits, you'd think everybody was wishing each other Happy Kwanzaa! and averting their eyes from oh so gauche Nativity scenes.

Good points, though I’m not sure I’d call people like this crybabies. Let’s try something a little more descriptive, something like bigoted, tiresome, narrow minded,...

"I don't think I should have to tolerate on my government-funded and financed buildings symbols of people who hate, when I read their doctrine and it says to kill the infidel and they're talking about Christians," Gifford said. "I don't think I should have to put those up, nor do I think my children or families should have to do that. I accept Christianity, and I am tolerant of others, but I don't have to promote with government dollars and government buildings other religions. I've got to tell you after 9-11, I'm not tolerant of a lot of things."

I stole that last bit from Jesus' General, who eloquently illustrates the abuse that God fearing Christians must live with on a daily basis with a telling example.