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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.
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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.
Alice Bowie|12.23.08 @ 8:10AM|#
Keep Dope (and santa claus) ALIVE !!!
|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.
MNG|12.23.08 @ 9:34AM|#
Epi
I guess I really did set you up for that one...
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 @ 9:36AM|#
I love Christmas.
Also, definitely don't believe that Jesus was magic.
|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!
Kyle|12.23.08 @ 9:46AM|#
I'm a Jew,
A lonely Jew,
I'd be merry,
But I'm Hebrew
On Christmas
|12.23.08 @ 9:52AM|#
If Wild Bill wants to see a real War on Christmas, send him to me.
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!
Wee Todd Didd|12.23.08 @ 10:34AM|#
God bless us, everyone!
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.