War on Christmas

"Christmas is a time when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ." — Bart Simpson

It seems we live in a time of wars these days. We've had the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and the war on terror, and now there is a new war right here on American soil, perhaps more important than all of those put together, the war on Christmas. The fine folks at the Fox News Channel noticed in Christmas 2004 the disturbing fact that many Government agencies and businesses were saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" and "winter break" instead of "Christmas break". As media luminary Bill O'Reilly astutely pointed out, this is, "all part of the secular progressive agenda" to get religion out of the public mind. Ever since then, our friends at Fox news, including Sean Hannity and those at The Factor have been keeping a close watch on this trend and spearheading the the counterstrike. This year Fox News host John Gibson even took on the thankless task of writing a book on the subject, creatively titled "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought".

My friends, Christmas is a time for peace on Earth and goodwill toward men^*. It's sometimes traditional to express those themes this time of year by helping the less fortunate and gathering with your friends and family, but I say what better way to express the spirit of the season than to start boycotts and use political pressure to force people into saying "Merry Christmas" whether they want to or not. Think about it: What would Jesus do?

One major front in the war on Christmas is retail. A great many stores use phrases like "Happy Holidays" in their advertising, rather than using the dreaded C-word. This cannot be allowed to stand. Thankfully, Bill O'Reilly has been outing these offenders, such as JC Penney's, Macy's, and Bloomingdale's, and encouraging the boycott of these chains until they give in and put Christmas back in their advertising. Some meeker people might be worried that this will end up putting people out of work right during the Christmas season, but the brave members of this movement know we must look past such trivialities and focus on the true goal, God's goal.

For their parts, the stores say that they simply want to send happy wishes to all their customers, Christian and non-Christian alike. Many say their employees are free to say "Merry Christmas" as much as they like, there are many displays that mention Christmas, and they carry plenty of merchandise geared solely toward Christmas. Now, first of all, we all know that non-Christian is just a PC term for heathen, and we can't allow there to be any doubt that this is unacceptable. America is 80% Christian, and 96% of Americans celebrate Christmas, according to a 2004 CNN/Gallop poll, so to the rest of you I say, "suck it up!" The majority rules. That's democracy. Some people say stores might want to sell things to the Jews, who also celebrate Hanukah during that time. I think they just have to accept that they live in a Christian country, and if they don't like that they should move to Israel.

Of course, this war has a political side too. Across the country, the liberals who control the government are making government Christmas displays into "Holiday" displays and schools' Christmas vacation into "winter vacation" all based on the misguided fiction of separation of church and state. Even noted secular humanist George W. Bush has gotten into the act. This year, his white house "Christmas cards" that didn't even mention Christmas and only wished people a happy "holiday season". Of course, they did add a biblical quotation to the card as a fig leaf, but it was from the Old Testament! I think the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights put it best when he said, "This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has ... capitulated to the worst elements in our culture." Yes, that's right, the worst elements.

Christmas has always been central to Christianity, and Christianity is central to our great nation. As we all know, the sacred nature of Christmas is not maintained in our houses of worship or in our family traditions but by our bureaucrats and our corporations. Without these voices, surely one might go through December in America and never hear about Christmas. Christianity has never been able to survive without the support of the government. If students are not told that it's Christmas break, how will they know to celebrate Christmas? And anyway, isn't it truly the Christmas advertising and trips to the mall that teach one the core principles of Christianity?

That's why it's clear that we must get the word Christmas back into ads and government displays. Clearly, if we can get companies to start saying "Merry Christmas" again they will get back to teaching our children about Jesus, his life of apostolic poverty and the gruesome death he faced for our sins. After all, when people were saying Merry Christmas commercialism never came before Christ in a department store, did it? Well, okay, traditionally some have focused less on Jesus and more on that false idol Santa Claus (now who would steal the focus from the baby Jesus on His birthday?), but I'm sure that if we can just get them saying "Merry Christmas" again then they'll see the folly of their ways. I'm sure will be seeing ads with slogans like, "Jesus saves and now so do you!" in no time. Of course Matthew 6:24 says "You cannot serve both God and Money," but it seems to me you can still try.

Now that you, hopefully, understand the dire consequences of losing this particular war, I think it's important to ask who is really behind the war on Christmas. It's clear that this is just another plot by the secular humanists and liberal progressives to push God out of the public eye and make people forget that the founding fathers intended the United States to be a Christian nation. If we want to get down to specifics, though, about what group is putting Christmas under siege, it's a little hard to tell. Few mainstream groups will publicly claim they are outright against people celebrating Christmas. Most of the leaders of major liberal and progressive groups even go so far as to pretend to celebrate Christmas with their families. This author suspects that Al Franken, Ted Kennedy, and Hillary Clinton are involved somehow. On the other hand, people always mention the Jews when pushing this "Happy Holidays" stuff, so it seems like they're likely culprits too. Didn't they do enough to Jesus already?!?

Before I close, I'd like to point out that the last few years have been busy ones for news; we've had the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ensuing reconstruction efforts, the war on terror, questions about pre-war intelligence and handling of detainees, and even confirmation processes for two new supreme court justices. Yet, the fine people at the Fox News Channel have had the wisdom and Prudence to realize that an issue like the war on Christmas is one of paramount importance. The fact that people like Bill O'Reilly choose to cover an issue like this instead of those like the others I mentioned shows how closely we should listen to what they have to say, and the depth of their judgment shows in that they recognize this is a crisis of such dire proportion. We can see that Fox news will choose the important issues to cover and the analysis there will give them the proper proportion. I just thank God every day that these people are brave enough to tell the truth in face of entrenched political and commercial interests.

Some people believe that terrorism is the biggest threat to the nation today. Others, such as Sen. Tom Coburn, believe it's the gay agenda. Both of those are very compelling, but I hope it is now clear to you that they pale in comparison to the threat posed by the war on Christmas.

--Merry Christmas

Sources:

• Alan Cooperman. "'Holiday' Cards Ring Hollow for Some on Bushes' List." The Washington Post Wednesday, December 7, 2005: Page A01
• O'Reilly: "War" on Christmas part of "secular progressive agenda" that includes "legalization of narcotics, euthanasia, abortion at will, gay marriage". http://mediamatters.org/items/200511210003. Media Matters. December 17, 2005.
• Christmas. http://poll.gallup.com/content/default.aspx?ci=14410&pg=2. The Gallop Poll. December 17, 2005.
• NIV. http://www.bbintl.org/bible/niv/nivMat6.html. Bible International. December 17, 2005.
• Oklahoma: Gays are Greatest Threat to American Freedom. http://atheism.about.com/b/a/104757.htm. About.com. December 17, 2005.

In my own defense, I started this before this whole Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays node exploded.