War on Christmas

[YWN666]

I get REALLY tired of hearing the denialists bleet "What war on Christmas?" when obviously there IS one.

I see no evidence of it. I see Christmas trees in the stores and on people's front lawns. I saw Santa Claus in the mall and he was not being led away in cuffs. I actually hear people talking about Christmas without being arrested. Imagine that.

 

[Vel]

I see no evidence of it. I see Christmas trees in the stores and on people's front lawns. I saw Santa Claus in the mall and he was not being led away in cuffs. I actually hear people talking about Christmas without being arrested. Imagine that.

It's all about the extreme. I don't think anyone would have been concerned about hearing Happy Holidays versus Merry Christmas had the PC crowd not started all the complaints several years ago about being offended by "Merry Christmas". And when it reached the point that the word Christmas was so politically taboo that we started seeing "Holiday Trees" ( Puleeze.. what holiday other than Christmas has people haul a tree into their house and cover it with decorations?) because retailers were so afraid of offending, people realized that they'd better protect Christmas as Christmas or lose it.

 

[Zoom-boing]

Just like Christmas, seems we do this every year.

I get REALLY tired of hearing the denialists bleet "What war on Christmas?" when obviously there IS one.

At the same time, the Chiken Littles make it sound like we're being invaded by China.

Anyone ever consider actually discussing the topic without being asshats about it?

Of course there's a war. But to those who don't care about God they don't see it because it doesn't matter to them.

My guess is that every year someone new will come along and stir the pot on this topic. Chicken littles? Some are; most aren't. I think most are just fed up with all the PC crap.

 

[Zoom-boing]

I see no evidence of it. I see Christmas trees in the stores and on people's front lawns. I saw Santa Claus in the mall and he was not being led away in cuffs. I actually hear people talking about Christmas without being arrested. Imagine that.

They like to call them holiday trees, dontcha know? And Santa? Uh no, we're talking Christ. When's the last time you saw any semblance of Christ in any Christmas display in a store?

 

[YWN666]

They like to call them holiday trees, dontcha know? And Santa? Uh no, we're talking Christ. When's the last time you saw any semblance of Christ in any Christmas display in a store?

And that ruins Christmas for you? Does a store have to have jesus displayed in order for you and your family to celebrate christmas at home? Does the store patronized by people of many different religions have to cater exclusively to christians?? Why? Oh, that's right - this is a christian nation where non-christians don't matter!

 

[YWN666]

It's all about the extreme. I don't think anyone would have been concerned about hearing Happy Holidays versus Merry Christmas had the PC crowd not started all the complaints several years ago about being offended by "Merry Christmas". And when it reached the point that the word Christmas was so politically taboo that we started seeing "Holiday Trees" ( Puleeze.. what holiday other than Christmas has people haul a tree into their house and cover it with decorations?) because retailers were so afraid of offending, people realized that they'd better protect Christmas as Christmas or lose it.

It's not about being PC, it's about economics. If a store alienates a segment of their customer base by using only a christian holiday greeting, they lose money. It's quite understandable that a store wants to catre to ALL people, not just christians. I just get a little fed up with hearing some christians whine about being persecuted when they have had the upper hand for so many years and everyone else had to accomodate them.

I'd like to know how anyone can "lose Christmas". I haven't seen the Christmas police take anyone kicking and screaming from their home because they celebrate Christmas.

 

[YWN666]

Of course there's a war. But to those who don't care about God they don't see it because it doesn't matter to them.

But is should matter to them because it matters to YOU? Well, pardon us!

 

[Vel]

And that ruins Christmas for you? Does a store have to have jesus displayed in order for you and your family to celebrate christmas at home? Does the store patronized by people of many different religions have to cater exclusively to christians?? Why? Oh, that's right - this is a christian nation where non-christians don't matter?

Does the store patronized by people of many different religions have to pointedly exclude Christians? When was the last time you saw a "holiday candleabra"?

 

[Zoomie1980]

And that ruins Christmas for you? Does a store have to have jesus displayed in order for you and your family to celebrate christmas at home? Does the store patronized by people of many different religions have to cater exclusively to Christians?? Why? Oh, that's right - this is a christian nation where non-christians don't matter!

What different religions? Of those who profess a faith, the US is 85% Christian, and most of the other 15% is Jewish.... If stores want to cater to the masses they should put Manger scenes everywhere because the overwhelming percentage of the population is Christian. Throw a few Hannakuh symbols around and you got almost 100% of the buying public covered.

The only ones they likely alienate is a tiny minority of odd-ball, non-mainstream, non-Judeo-Christians who aren't buying anything at this time of year anyway because they don't celebrate the holiday!

 

[Zoomie1980]

It's not about being PC, it's about economics. If a store alienates a segment of their customer base by using only a christian holiday greeting, they lose money. It's quite understandable that a store wants to catre to ALL people, not just christians. I just get a little fed up with hearing some christians whine about being persecuted when they have had the upper hand for so many years and everyone else had to accomodate them.

I'd like to know how anyone can "lose Christmas". I haven't seen the Christmas police take anyone kicking and screaming from their home because they celebrate Christmas.

What segment could they possibly alienate? Christmas is a CHRISTIAN holiday!!! Non Christians don't celebrate it anyway so who's to alienate? It had EVERYTHING to do with the PC IDIOCY that has affected the nation for almost 20 years, and has finally been largely beaten down, thankfully.

We, as a nation, have finally realized you DO NOT have a "right" to not be offended.

I personally go out of my way to ensure I offend at least one person, somewhere, everyday, for no other reason than to prove that I have a right to do just that.

 

[Ravi]

Hows that?

Do you actually read other people's posts? Does anyone? I'm beginning to think not.

 

[YWN666]

Does the store patronized by people of many different religions have to pointedly exclude Christians? When was the last time you saw a "holiday candleabra"?

They don't exclude christians. Christians are treated like everyone else. That seems to be the problem here. Some christians want special treatment at everyone else's expense.

 

[YWN666]

What different religions? Of those who profess a faith, the US is 85% Christian, and most of the other 15% is Jewish.... If stores want to cater to the masses they should put Manger scenes everywhere because the overwhelming percentage of the population is Christian. Throw a few Hannakuh symbols around and you got almost 100% of the buying public covered.

The only ones they likely alienate is a tiny minority of odd-ball, non-mainstream, non-Judeo-Christians who aren't buying anything at this time of year anyway because they don't celebrate the holiday!

Look at it from the viewpoint of the retailers. Why risk alienating 15% of their customers when they can greet everyone in an equal manner and cover all religious beliefs? If the retailers don't know the religion of the individual customers, what is the harm in saying Happy Holidays? Why does that offend some people?

 

[YWN666]

What segment could they possibly alienate? Christmas is a CHRISTIAN holiday!!! Non Christians don't celebrate it anyway so who's to alienate? It had EVERYTHING to do with the PC IDIOCY that has affected the nation for almost 20 years, and has finally been largely beaten down, thankfully.

There ARE other religious holidays in December, ya know. You're demonstrating the tunnelvision that is at the root of this ridiculous controversy

We, as a nation, have finally realized you DO NOT have a "right" to not be offended.

I personally go out of my way to ensure I offend at least one person, somewhere, everyday, for no other reason than to prove that I have a right to do just that.

Is that the christian way of doing things? If you can't have it all going your way, you'll ruin it for everyone else? jesus must be so proud!

 

[editec]

Oh boo hoo hoo!

Nobody's going to steal Christmas.

Get over yourselves.

 

[YWN666]

What 'War on Christmas'?


By Ruth Marcus

Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page A21

I've been hearing about this "War on Christmas," so I headed to the Heritage Foundation the other day for a briefing from one of the defending army's generals: Fox News anchor John Gibson, author of "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." Gibson -- and Bill O'Reilly, his comrade in the Fox-hole -- see this as a two-front war: Assaulting Christmas from the government end, they say, are pusillanimous school principals, politically corrected city managers and their ilk, bullied by the ACLU types into extirpating any trace of Christmas from the public square. Battering the holiday from the private sector are infidel retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart, which balk at using the C-word in their advertising in favor of such secularist slogans as "Happy Holidays."

The assault, Gibson told the Heritage crowd, has reached a "shocking level this year."

After the lecture, I wandered over to Union Station to check out a retail battlefield. Inside and out, the station was festooned with giant You Know What wreaths. A huge You Know What tree, with presents wrapped in red and green underneath, stood in the main hall, near a placard announcing "Norwegian Christmas at Union Station." A high-tech player piano was playing "Go Tell It on the Mountain," proclaiming the birth of You Know Who; the next selection was You Know Who Else Is Coming to Town. The most generic element was a small sign reading "Happy Holidays," but even then the words were bracketed by reindeer -- and let's just say, they weren't eating latkes. It was beginning to look a lot like You Know What.

If the anti-Christmas forces are winning, then the war in Iraq is nothing short of total victory.

It may seem strange -- even foolhardy -- for a nice Jewish girl to be writing about Christmas. So let me say: I'm a huge fan, always have been, in a kind of nose-pressed-against-the-glass sort of way. When I was growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, my family used to pile into the car every Christmas and drive around looking at the lights, with my mother and I engaging in earnest discussion of what color scheme we'd choose. If I were Christian, I suspect, I'd be the sort of over-the-top type who buys ornaments year-round and has a drawer full of Christmas sweaters, the kind featuring pompoms as tree ornaments.

This is the time of year, though, when those of us who aren't Christian, or who don't celebrate Christmas, most feel our minority status. I've experienced this especially acutely since my children started to look longingly at shopping mall Santas (Santa's a nice guy, honey, but he's not for us) and ask why there are so few menorahs or dreidels among the reindeer and Christmas trees. (How to break this gently? Their team has a lot more players.)

I'm not one who would argue that we ought to Grinch our way out of this discomfort by aggressively de-Christmafying. And to the extent that the war-on-Christmas crowd is simply reacting to knee-jerk political correctness, I'm with them. It's idiotic to call the Capitol conifer a Holiday Tree -- as it has been for the past several years, until it was re-, um, christened this year. If, as Gibson reports, the Plano, Tex., schools really have an edict banning red-and-green decorations (was it either color or just the combination?) -- well, you don't have to be Christian to find this more than a little silly.

But there is an ugly, bullying aspect to this dispute, in which the pro-Christmas forces are not only asking, reasonably, that their religion be treated with equal status and respect but in which they are attacking legitimate efforts at inclusivity. It's this sense of aggrieved victimhood that confuses me: What, exactly, is so threatening about calling the school holiday a winter break rather than Christmas vacation?

The latest alleged perfidy is the failure of the White House Christmas card to mention Christmas, instead expressing "best wishes for a holiday season of hope and happiness" and featuring a verse from Psalms. William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, calls this evidence that the administration has "capitulated to the worst elements in our culture." I call it a recognition, especially welcome at a time of sectarian violence, that not all the 1.4 million folks on the Christmas list are Christian.

This has reached its most imposition-of-Sharia-law-like level of intolerance in the campaign to cow stores into saying Christmas. O'Reilly, escalating his "Christmas Under Siege" campaign, has posted a list of naughty and nice retailers. The American Family Association goes further, calling for a boycott of stores -- it's targeted Target -- that fail to use the word Christmas in their advertising or in-store promotions. "Target doesn't want to offend a small minority who oppose Christmas," says AFA's chairman, Donald Wildmon. "But they don't mind offending Christians who celebrate the birth of Christ."

Really? I've just gone on the Target Web site and plugged Christmas into my product search. "We found 39,197 match(es) for 'Christmas' at Target," it reported. How offensive is that?

 

[YWN666]

USATODAY.com - A fictional 'war on Christmas'

A fictional 'war on Christmas'
By T. Jeremy Gunn
Last December, a group called Public Advocate for the United States (which claims to defend America's traditional family values) sent some Christmas carolers over to sing in front of the ACLU offices in Washington.
Carrying signs reading "Merry Christmas" and "Please Don't Sue Us!" — they also seem to have carried with them some rather strange imaginings about an assault on Christmas. (Related: Law doesn't mandate a secular Christmas | The year's dust-ups)

I don't know what the carolers thought might happen.

To tell the truth, the ACLU is not often serenaded by Christmas carolers. So it was with some excitement that the staff went outside and joined in the singing. They brought with them cookies and warm drinks to share. One staff member, who is an ordained Baptist minister, did a little witnessing about his faith to some astonished proponents of family values.

Fox News did broadcast the event (as a part of its "war against Christmas" campaign). Although the visiting singers were shown, the cameras failed to include any footage showing that everyone had participated in the caroling. Rather than reporting the facts, the anchor preferred the propaganda: "We believe the ACLU heard the message loud and clear, but they don't care."

The battle cries

This year, several groups are once again introducing the Christmas season with some heated and misleading military rhetoric. Some declare, "There is a war against Christmas!" One group launched a "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign." One particularly bizarre charge is that there is "a thorough and virulent anti-Christmas campaign." Without a shred of evidence, they pretend that there is an effort afoot to remove "God" from the Declaration of Independence. Two groups even announced that they have assembled hundreds of lawyers to protect Christmas against this imaginary threat.

Make no mistake about it. These warrior-lawyers are not asking us to love our neighbors (and certainly not our enemies), nor to turn the other cheek, nor to be peacemakers, nor to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.

Nor is this a joyful effort to encourage the Christmas spirit in the millions of places where it can be promoted without any conflict: in people's hearts, in their homes, with families, in churches, or with friend and neighbors.

No, this is a campaign of military-infused rhetoric demanding that everyone accept one politically correct version of "Christmas."

For example, this year in Boston — the same city where Puritans once prohibited the pagan-inspired "Christmas tree" — the new Puritans now demand that the city call its evergreen spruce a "Christmas tree," and they threatened a lawsuit if the city didn't comply.

Another group charges that there is a "campaign of fear, intimidation, and disinformation" against seasonal symbols in Raleigh, N.C. — and they offer to provide a defense for the city against any threatened lawsuit. Yet they give no evidence that anyone is threatening a lawsuit. Before accusing others of engaging in "disinformation," perhaps these Christmas warriors should first take a look in the mirror.

Why this desire to manufacture controversy — about Christmas?

Guidelines already exist

Rather than engaging in propaganda about a "war on Christmas," all who want to promote the spirit of Christmas should remember a couple of simple guidelines.

First, Christmas displays — including nativity scenes — are perfectly acceptable at homes and churches. This religious expression is a valued and protected part of the First Amendment rights guaranteed to all citizens.

Second, governments should not be in the business of endorsing religious displays. Religion does best when government stays out of the business of deciding which holidays and religions to promote. Religion belongs where it prospers best: with individuals, families and religious communities.

And finally, as a seasonal greeting to all Christians: Merry Christmas from the ACLU! And for believers in all other traditions: Thank you for enriching our world!

T. Jeremy Gunn is director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

 

[WillowTree]

lol you guys kill me,, you keep denying there's a war on Christmas then proceed to have a war on Christmas every year..

 

[editec]

lol you guys kill me,, you keep denying there's a war on Christmas then proceed to have a war on Christmas every year..

Oh Yeah.

The body count is just something awful, isn't it?

yawn

 

[Shogun]

Nope. What bothers us is the slow erosion of God from . . . . everything. You don't notice it because it isn't important to you.

BTW, what stores do you shop at that have Christmas greeters? The only store where I see greeters is Kohls . . .and they just want me to open a credit card account.

but you don't have jurisdiction over EVERYTHING. Welcome to fucking reality where, in fact, you have to share the world with others who don't share your faith. The world is not something for you dogma junkies to burn a jesus brand into just because you feel like peeing on territory. sorry to burst your bubble.