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New at Reason: Greg Beato on the War on Christmas
At no time in
the history of the world has Christmas been a more visible and
comprehensively provisioned spectacle than it is in America today.
And as Greg Beato writes, it is our most commercialized tradition,
which means that it's also our most intractable tradition. At this
point, it would be easier to rid America of guns than it would be
to pry every last "Oh Holy Night" glass ornament from our cold dead
fingers.
Three Dollar Bill|12.23.08 @ 7:09AM|#
When are you changing the name of the magazine to Gay Life? Not much of anyone else reads it anymore.
|12.23.08 @ 8:35AM|#
KULTUR WAR!
Honestly, Christmas is totally magical when you're a kid--even an
atheist kid. But when you get older, it starts to become more of a
hassle.
|12.23.08 @ 8:40AM|#
I won't blame the jews, but if Christmas Vacation doesn't come
on soon my wife is gonna kill someone, and it may be me!
Now that global warming is an issue to the mainline protestants,
can some godly man please denounce the practice of yard decorating?
Especially those energy guzzling inflateables.
ed|12.23.08 @ 8:45AM|#
the defenders of Christmas continue to imagine that defeat
may be just around the corner
O'Reilly et al aren't really concerned that Christmas will
disappear. It's more simple than that: They have thin skins and
just don't like being made fun of. When some other individual
disagrees with their exact interpretation of the holiday, they go
into full defensive mode, pretending to be under attack. It's quite
comical, especially in regards to the inevitable atheist
counter-demonstrations. Is O'Reilly afraid of a non-God? How 16th
Century.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1958|12.23.08 @ 8:49AM|#
CHRIST CLIMBED DOWN
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings
|12.23.08 @ 8:51AM|#
From "religious indoctrination" standpoint, it's a fight not worth having. Even Charlie Brown knew back in 1965 that the Christmas we celebrate has only a tangential relationship with Christianity. Linus was one of the few holdouts.
|12.23.08 @ 8:52AM|#
They have thin skins and just don't like being made fun
of.
Honestly, ed, I think it's more utilitarian than that. It's a
subject that gets their audiences riled up and attracts
viewers/listeners. That simple.
O'Reilly is still a thin-skinned tool, though. No doubt.
|12.23.08 @ 8:53AM|#
Is O'Reilly afraid of a non-God? How 16th
Century.
O'Reilly makes his living peddling outrage. His interest in this
"controversy" is based on that.
Tym|12.23.08 @ 8:55AM|#
Honestly, Christmas is totally magical when you're a kid--even an
atheist kid. But when you get older, it starts to become more of a
hassle.
I feel the same way about snow. Fun to play in as a kid, a pain to
shovel and drive in as an adult.
ed|12.23.08 @ 8:56AM|#
That Ferlinghetti poem is terrible. It doesn't even rhyme! I'm
sending a copy to O'Reilly.
You're on notice, Ferlinghetti!
MNG|12.23.08 @ 9:03AM|#
My wife watches Colbert with me regularly and one day I flipped
during commercials to O'Reilly and, seriously, this being the first
time she had every watched O'Reilly, she was like "Oh my God, this
is the guy Colbert's mocking? He really IS like this!" It made her
enjoyment of the Report go up even further.
Ironically O'Reilly was going on about some atheist group "being
allowed" to put some display up in Washington state near Christmas
and urging everyone to write the Governor in outrage.
MNG|12.23.08 @ 9:04AM|#
" Fun to play in as a kid, a pain to shovel and drive in as an
adult."
And fuck is it WET. I hate being wet as an adult. Didn't seem to
bother me as a kid. Another thing like that: falling down.
|12.23.08 @ 9:06AM|#
And fuck is it WET. I hate being wet as an adult.
"I like the pole and the hole, and right now I'm as moist as a
snack cake down there."
I don\'t care|12.23.08 @ 9:15AM|#
Can someone tell me if this nonsense is a media construct? It
has to be. No one I know is remotely concerned about the victim
status of christmas. Why am I supposed to care about christmas
victimhood? The so called "war on christmas" industry is as big as
regular christmas now.
I don't care. I don't care that christians or Bill O'Reilly care
about their religion and its symbols. Have fun shopping for your
plastic "made in china" jesus dolls at Wal-Mart. If christians buy
their plastic jesus figurines from communists, does that they are
communists? Aren't all communists atheists? Wasn't jesus a
communist?
Oh yea, one more thing. I don't have a christmas tree. Isn't that a
pagan symbol anyway? Didn't the christians try to tame the pagans?
If so, why did the christians adopt a pagan symbol and define it as
a christian symbol.
All this stuff is really confusing.
Nancy Grace|12.23.08 @ 9:16AM|#
Let us all at this magical time remember God's little angel, Caylee Anthony, whose tender face inspires us nightly on Headline News, 8 P.M. eastern time, 7 Central, repeated ad nauseam, Amen.
|12.23.08 @ 9:33AM|#
We sell a Christmas Blend at Starbucks, but we are told to say Happy Holidays. It's fucking mind boggling.
mystery shopper|12.23.08 @ 9:35AM|#
Did anyone else click the 810 lb. Nativity Scene link? Is that a Sarah Palin statue on the far right?
Mad Max|12.23.08 @ 9:36AM|#
Just because O'Reilly is an asshole, it does not follow that
there *aren't* Scrooges who are offended by public Christian
displays, whether on public property or private property. It's not
exactly the most momentous issue facing the Republic, but it can be
a hassle.
There has been something of a switch in the positions of the
contending parties. Traditionally, it's the fundamentalist
Christers who fret about the commericialization of Christmas, and
the secularists who say, lighten up, dude, it's a time for
presents, let's not get hung up on the religious meaning of the
season.
Now there has been something of an evolution of the debate, with
the secularists beginning to take the religious meaning of the
season seriously - which is perhaps a positive development, since
they are sincerely concerned about using the language of a religion
they do not share, and they're also worried about offending
non-Christians and making them feel like second-class citizens. Now
that secularists are actually beginning to take note of the
"Christ" in Christmas, maybe Christians will become more committed
to that.
So thank you, secularists, for calling the public's attention to
the Christian content of this holiday. Thank you also for
expressing empathy for people of non-Christian traditions. As it
happens, most non-Christians aren't offended by the Christian
references, but of course some of them are. It's possible to get
offended by anything.
(Incidentally, if a Muslim wished me a happy Ramadan, I would be
grateful for the sentiment, and appreciative of his niceness, but
that's just me.)
One useful side-effect is that the secularists, in their focus on
Christian imagery, are willing to overlook, or even to encourage,
the display of an image from another monotheistic faith - Judaism.
In places where nobody would dare show a creche or cross, they are
happy to display the Chanukkah menorah.
Many of the people who accept the display of the menorah would be
horrified at the ideas endorsed by that symbol. If you read the
story in Maccabees on which Chanukkah is based (the story is in the
Catholic Bible, which contains 1 and 2 Maccabees), you find a story
about the victory of the Jews over the pagan Greeks who were trying
to suppress their religion. The menorah symbolizes an oil lamp
which only had one day's supply of oil, but God made it burn for
seven days.
Let us count the ways in which this story offends
secularists:
- Celebrates the victory of Jewish monotheism over Greek
paganism
- Celebrates a military victory by Jews against non-Jews, rather
than a "peace agreement" brokered by the U.S. State
Department
- Celebrates a miracle - a supernatural intervention by God into
the affairs of everyday life, suspending the ordinary laws of
nature.
- The miracle involves the use of *oil* as an energy source. Isn't
God worried about his carbon footprint?
And these menorahs are all over the place!
So, Happy Chanukkah, everybody!
|12.23.08 @ 9:42AM|#
I guess I really did set you up for that one...
Yeah, I mean--"wet"? What do you expect me to do?
Max, don't forget that dreidels
are pushed on unsuspecting children everywhere!
Zeb|12.23.08 @ 10:09AM|#
"The miracle involves the use of *oil* as an energy
source"
To be fair, it was probably olive oil. Carbon neutral, you
know.
ed|12.23.08 @ 10:11AM|#
they're [secularists] also worried about offending
non-Christians
and making them feel like second-class citizens
No we're not. They are second-class citizens,
philosophically. Barely a notch above retards.
Happy holidays!
Mad Max|12.23.08 @ 10:24AM|#
Zeb,
Don't let yourself get brainwashed by the deniers over at the Olive
Oil lobby. Olive oil causes global warming whenever she gets in
trouble and Popeye has to spend so much energy rescuing her.
Don't let the Olive Oil denialists sabotage science!
rose|12.23.08 @ 12:10PM|#
Not a Christian, love Christmas, at least in its American, blissfully commercial form. There's something about a holiday that encourages people to be tacky, cheerful, and sincere -- and sing in public, whether or not they can -- that just makes me happy. And egg nog!
ed|12.23.08 @ 12:14PM|#
Hell, even Ayn Rand liked Christmas, for the very reasons noted above. It's not about Jesus at all. And that's what pisses off the O'Reilly retards.
A Mind|12.23.08 @ 8:26PM|#
Well technically the Christmas tree is a Pagan symbol, as well
as the virgin mother, the birth...the star...Yule Logs...
I could really go on.
Here is how I feel about it, ALL or NONE.
If the Atheist can come up with a Non Christmas sign that
accurately represents the atheists population, Great then so
what?!
I want a Yule celebration for the Pagans. Maybe some nice Sky Clad
dancing in the Governors halls, with mistletoe and eggnog. Maybe
some majestic Greens to life the spirit.
No mater how you put it, if we get at least a few days a year where
our sorry excuses for a species tones it down a bit, and tries to
play nice. Fine, they can worship a turnip for all I care.
Merry Yule!
The Pagan next door. ;)
|12.24.08 @ 10:58AM|#
Great article. It always makes me laugh when people complain
that atheists and whatnot are trying to get rid of Christmas, as if
they ever could. I am agnostic, and I couldn't care less what
ridiculously gaudy manger scene or giant inflatable baby Jesus or
whatever you have on your lawn. Admittedly, I don't particularly
like mangers and whatnot on public property, and might object if I
could bother myself to do it amidst the weeks of insanity shopping
for the holiday.
The thing I like about Christmas as an agnostic is that it IS so
commercialized. I feel a little weirder, though not much,
celebrating Easter with family, and then the rest of the religious
holidays are just too religious for me. Christmas stripped out the
Jesus from giving, replaced him with someone much cooler (Santa),
and said, quite literally "Be good for goodness sake". There's
change I can believe in. I would take Santa Christmas over Christ
Christmas any day of the week.
|12.25.08 @ 2:53AM|#
ed, I recommend that you appeal to your God - the state - to
help you avoid witnessing any religious symbols this CHRISTMAS
season.
I'm no Christmasser - not in the religious sense and definitely not
in the commercial sense - but self-described secularists are so
often in thrall to the Church of the Capitol or the Church of the
Flowing Black Robes that your "retard" invective boomerangs right
back at you.
Merry Christmas, pagan.
|12.29.08 @ 7:45PM|#
Of course the article conveniently leaves out much of the
history of what happened in December of 1906 prior to the boycott
and what the Jewish community actually requested. The Jewish
community did not initially ask that the schools "to bar
school-based festivities that had in the past included such
elements as religious hymns, pictures of the Madonna, holly,
mistletoe, and Christmas trees." What they asked is that the school
teachers not proselytize to the Jewish children during any season.
What sparked the debate was in 1905 at Public School 144 in
Brownsville, Brooklyn, principal Fred. F. Harding told an assembly
of children words very much like the following: "Now, boys and
girls, at this time of the year especially, I want you all to have
the feeling of Christ in you. Have more pleasure in giving than in
taking; be like Christ." Augusta Herman, a 13-year-old student
otherwise lost to history, boldly requested permission to speak.
She asked Harding whether he "did not think such teaching more
appropriate in a Sunday school or a church?" Harding replied,
"Christ loves all but the hypocrites and the hypocrites are those
who do not believe in him."
If the School Board would have admonished the principal as
requested, the matter would not have escalated to the point of the
boycott.
And, as Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the
story.
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