The War On Christmas

[Nbadan]

Throughout his promotion of his book The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought (Sentinel, October 2005), Fox News host John Gibson has remained vague about exactly orchestrating the alleged attack on Christmas beyond the "liberals" in the book's title. For instance, as Media Matters for America documented, during an appearance on the October 20 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Gibson limited his criticism of those supposedly undermining Christmas to "liberals." O'Reilly, on the other hand, was compelled to narrow the focus of their offensive: "I think you made a mistake by saying it's a liberal plot," O'Reilly told Gibson. "It's the far left. It's the loony left, the Kool-Aid secular progressive ACLU America-haters. That's who's doing this."

Media Matters (http://mediamatters.org/items/200512010018)

The wing-nuts have done everything to try and sell the 'alleged' war on christmas, but who's version of Christmas are they really trying to promote?


This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else

This campaign - which is being hyped on Fox and conservative talk radio - is an odd one. Christmas remains ubiquitous, and with its celebrators in control of the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and every state supreme court and legislature, it hardly lacks for powerful supporters. There is also something perverse, when Christians are being jailed for discussing the Bible in Saudi Arabia and slaughtered in Sudan, about spending so much energy on stores that sell "holiday trees."

What is less obvious, though, is that Christmas's self-proclaimed defenders are rewriting the holiday's history. They claim that the "traditional" American Christmas is under attack by what John Gibson, another Fox anchor, calls "professional atheists" and "Christian haters." But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is not defending America's Christmas traditions, but creating a new version of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

<snip>

The Christmas that Mr. O'Reilly and his allies are promoting - one closely aligned with retailers, with a smack-down attitude toward nonobservers - fits with their campaign to make America more like a theocracy, with Christian displays on public property and Christian prayer in public schools. It does not, however, appear to be catching on with the public. That may be because most Americans do not recognize this commercialized, mean-spirited Christmas as their own. Of course, it's not even clear the campaign's leaders really believe in it. Just a few days ago, Fox News's online store was promoting its "Holiday Collection" for shoppers. Among the items offered to put under a "holiday tree" was "The O'Reilly Factor Holiday Ornament." After bloggers pointed this out, Fox changed the "holidays" to "Christmases."


NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/opinion/04sun3.html?hp)

:hat

[xrayzebra]

Well Dan, you don't have to celebrate. It is not a 'forced" thing you know. I'll
bet some would love have you work for them on Christmas day. But you forgot
to mention that ACLU and other Liberals have challenged in every way possible the
open celebration of Christmas.

[Nbadan]

Most people, Christian and otherwise, don't really seem to care about this alleged war on Christmas. Businesses like Target, Walmart and others who independently chose to replace the words 'Merry Christmas' with 'Happy Holidays' are doing so of their own accord, not because of the ACLU. Public schools walk a fine line depending on the district although most let the students make the association on their own between the celebration of Christmas and the birth of Jesus.

The whole 'War on Christmas' is bogus.

[Nbadan]

Bill O'Reilly and his "War on Christmas"
Being Right and Wrong in the name of the Christ
by Dr. Gerry Lower, Eugene, Oregon


On the second day of December, Fox News Network reported the results of their "opinion dynamics poll" regarding Bill O'Reilly's statement that "There is a war on Christmas in the U.S. today." Of those responding to the poll, 42% said they agreed with Bill's statement. The majority, 48% of those polled, were in disagreement with O'Reilly's statement, and the other 10% essentially said, as always, that they did not know anything (1). In this instance, those who know nothing are in a desireable position because of the high probability that neither active side in the debate knows what they are talking about.


It is O'Reilly's notion that his "War on Christmas" is being hotly pursued by liberals and atheists and those who would have the audacity to agree with the radical notion of seperating church and state. Bill just came unhinged, you see, by the media's use of the term "Holiday trees" in place of the term "Christmas trees" - which Bill dutifully interpreted as an effort by evil people to remove Christ from Christmas. In Bill's Old Testament world, it is an absolute requirement that its adherents live in the Here and Now, no history allowed, no evolution allowed, no cultural context allowed. It makes for ignorance defined.


Meanwhile, Fox News is making effort to sell "Holiday" decorations with Bill's name on them (2), a pair of balls to hang on what better be your "Christmas" tree. It makes a little money for Fox News Network and Bill gets his name haning from some dupe's tree. Bill has taken an overt path to ignorance bordering on the psychotic, while Fox News has taken an overt path to religious hypocrisy bordering on the psychotic (3). Bill has accomplished the impossible, i.e., to be right and wrong at the same time.


Bill is, of course, entirely right in claiming that there is a "War on Christmas." At the same time, Bill is extraordinarily wrong to assign his wrathful blame to liberals and the detractors of religion and capitalism. Surely Bill must know that wars are far more prone to stem from right wing, conservative interests. Surely Bill must know that the war on Christmas began long ago, shortly after WWII, when capitalism took over both political parties, leaving America with only liberal and conservative capitalists at the helm.

OpedNews (http://www.opednews.com/)

http://shop.ecompanystore.com/foxnews/FOX_products/FOX21001200-L.jpg

[jochhejaam]

The thread reminds me of the song parodies; "Merry Ramahanakwanzmas" and "Chipmunks roasting on an open fire"

[SpursWoman]

In this instance, those who know nothing are in a desireable position because of the high probability that neither active side in the debate knows what they are talking about.


:lol :lol

[JoeChalupa]

I love Christmas and the Holiday season!

[Hook Dem]

I love Christmas and the Holiday season!
I do too Joe. Happy Holidays to you and your family and "Merry Christmas"!!!!!

[Oh, Gee!!]

I do too Joe. Happy Holidays to you and your family and "Merry Christmas"!!!!!

omg. i can't believe you said the C-word

[SpursWoman]

Christmas you! :cuss

[Murphy]

I just don't get the ACLU nuts, they say yes to live sex shows in Oregon, and no to baby Jesus.

[Yonivore]

Happy Holy Days everyone!

[boutons]

dubya fighting the war against Christmas, too.

=====================

washingtonpost.com

'Holiday' Cards Ring Hollow for Some on Bushes' List

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 7, 2005

What's missing from the White House Christmas card? Christmas.

This month, as in every December since he took office, President Bush sent out cards with a generic end-of-the-year message, wishing 1.4 million of his close friends and supporters a happy "holiday season."

Many people are thrilled to get a White House Christmas card, no matter what the greeting inside. But some conservative Christians are reacting as if Bush stuck coal in their stockings.

"This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture," said William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Bush "claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one," said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com. "I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it."

Religious conservatives are miffed because they have been pressuring stores to advertise Christmas sales rather than "holiday specials" and urging schools to let students out for Christmas vacation rather than for "winter break." They celebrated when House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) insisted that the sparkling spectacle on the Capitol lawn should be called the Capitol Christmas Tree, not a holiday spruce.

Then along comes a generic season's greeting from the White House, paid for by the Republican National Committee. The cover art is also secular, if not humanist: It shows the presidential pets -- two dogs and a cat -- frolicking on a snowy White House lawn.

"Certainly President and Mrs. Bush, because of their faith, celebrate Christmas," said Susan Whitson, Laura Bush's press secretary. "Their cards in recent years have included best wishes for a holiday season, rather than Christmas wishes, because they are sent to people of all faiths."

That is the same rationale offered by major retailers for generic holiday catalogues, and it is accepted by groups such as the National Council of Churches. "I think it's more important to put Christ back into our war planning than into our Christmas cards," said the council's general secretary, the Rev. Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman.

But the White House's explanation does not satisfy the groups -- which have grown in number in recent years -- that believe there is, in the words of the Heritage Foundation, a "war on Christmas" involving an "ever-stronger push toward a neutered 'holiday' season so that non-Christians won't be even the slightest bit offended."

One of the generals on the pro-Christmas side is Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. "Sometimes it's hard to tell whether this is sinister -- it's the purging of Christ from Christmas -- or whether it's just political correctness run amok," he said. "I think in the case of the White House, it's just political correctness."

Wildmon does not give retailers the same benefit of the doubt. This year, he has called for a consumer boycott of Target stores because the chain issued a holiday advertising circular that did not mention Christmas. Last year, he aimed a similar boycott at Macy's Inc., which averted a repeat this December by proclaiming "Merry Christmas" in its advertising and in-store displays.

"It bothers me that the White House card leaves off any reference to Jesus, while we've got Ramadan celebrations in the White House," Wildmon said. "What's going on there?"

:lol:lol:lol

At the Catholic League, Donohue had just announced a boycott of the Lands' End catalogue when he received his White House holiday card. True, he said, the Bushes included a verse from Psalm 28, but Psalms are in the Old Testament and do not mention Jesus' birth.

"They'd better address this, because they're no better than the retailers who have lost the will to say 'Merry Christmas,' " he said.

Donohue said that Wal-Mart, facing a threatened boycott, added a Christmas page to its Web site and fired a customer relations employee who wrote a letter linking Christmas to "Siberian shamanism." He was not mollified by a letter from Lands' End saying it "adopted the 'holiday' terminology as a way to comply with one of the basic freedoms granted to all Americans: freedom of religion."

"Ninety-six percent of Americans celebrate Christmas," Donohue said. "Spare me the diversity lecture."

:lol:lol:lol Spare me the bullshit. Ameicans don't celebrate CHRIST-mas, they celebrate $Chri$tma$, well lubricated with lots of alcohol.

Diversity has been a hallmark of White House greeting cards for some time, according to Mary Evans Seeley of Tampa, Fla., author of "Season's Greetings From the White House." The last presidential Christmas card that mentioned Christmas was in 1992. It was sent by George H.W. and Barbara Bush, parents of the current president.

Seeley said the first president to send out true Christmas cards, as opposed to signed photographs or handwritten letters, was Franklin D. Roosevelt. "Merry Christmas From the President and Mrs. Roosevelt," said his first annual card, in 1933.

Like many modern touches, the generic New Year's card was introduced to the White House by John and Jacqueline Kennedy. In 1962, they had Hallmark print 2,000 cards, of which 1,800 cards said "The President and Mrs. Kennedy Wish You a Blessed Christmas" and 200 said "With Best Wishes for a Happy New Year."

Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson continued that tradition for a couple of years, but it required keeping track of Christian and non-Christian recipients. Beginning in 1966, they wished everyone a "Joyous Christmas," and no president has attempted the two-card trick since.

Seeley dates the politicization of the White House Christmas card to Richard M. Nixon, who increased the number of recipients tenfold, to 40,000, in his first year. The numbers since have snowballed, hitting 125,000 under Jimmy Carter, topping 400,000 under Bill Clinton and rising to more than a million under the current Bushes, with each president's political party paying the bill.


:lol:lol:lol As if anybody had any doubt, these CHRISTmas cards are nothing but political campagning.


The wording, meanwhile, has often flip-flopped. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter put "Merry Christmas" in their 1977 card and then switched to "Holiday Season" for the next three years. Ronald and Nancy Reagan, similarly, began with a "Joyous Christmas" in 1981 and 1982 but doled out generic holiday wishes from 1983 to 1988. The elder President Bush stayed in the "Merry Christmas" spirit all four years, and the Clintons opted for inclusive greetings for all of their eight years.

The current Bush has straddled the divide, offering generic greetings along with an Old Testament verse. To some religious conservatives, that makes all the difference.

:lol:lol:lol Christmas is the start of the New Testament, what's with OT verse? Perhaps it shows the WH is really an belligerant, murderous OT outfit, totally bereft of NT humanity.

"There's a verse from Scripture in it. I don't mind that at all, as long as we don't try to pretend we're not a nation under God," said the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

==============

© 2005 The Washington Post Company


"one nation under God", a slogan about as meaningful as "stay the course".