BonosSaint
Rock n' Roll Doggie
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2004
- Messages
- 3,566
^
Nicely stated, Moonlit
Nicely stated, Moonlit
Last edited:
nathan1977 said:There's a lot of thoughts I have about this, too many to set down, so I'll just ask when we let Ebenezer start dictating terms of the holiday?
You don't want to celebrate Christmas? Don't. But about 80% of America is Christian, and CHRISTMAS is the holiday they celebrate. If you'd like to celebrate something else, or go somewhere where it's not celebrated at all, there are plenty of countries where you can do that. Have a good time, send me a Christmakwanakah card.
BonoVoxSupastar said:
You could just walk around saying F.O.A.D.
There are a dwindling number of battling days until Christmas. The malls are filled with so much Christmas Muzak that we are all longing for a silent night. Nevertheless, we are again treated to the notion that Christmas is beleaguered and besieged and battered by the forces of diversity and secularism.
Jerry Falwell's Liberty Counsel is running a "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign." James Dobson's Alliance Defense Fund is running a "Christmas Project" with the motto: "Merry Christmas. It's OK to say it."
Fox News' John Gibson has killed who knows how many trees to print "The War on Christmas." The combined forces of the Catholic League, the American Family Association and Bill O'Reilly have accused Target and others of banning Christmas by wishing their customers a "Happy Holiday." And to top it all off, the Committee for Justice is running ads that promote Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as a sort of Father Christmas figure who will defend religion.
On the one hand, the Christmas defense team is portraying its side as the overwhelming majority, the 90 percent who celebrate Christmas. On the other hand, they are describing themselves as oppressed, indeed victimized.
On the one hand, they want more Christ in Christmas; on the other hand, they want more Christmas in the marketplace. It makes one long for the screeds against commercialism.
The last real war against Christmas was, in fact, a religious war. It was waged in my hometown by Puritans who banned mince pies and plum puddings and declared that celebrating Christmas was a criminal offense. In 1711, Cotton Mather gave his famous lecture against "mad mirth," "long-eating," hard-drinking and reveling "fit for not but a Saturn or Bacchus."
As for American history, let us remember that Congress convened on the first Christmas of the new Republic, Dec. 25, 1789. Christmas wasn't a federal holiday until 1870.
I admit to being bemused with today's one-size-fits-all "holiday" season. How did the celebration of the birth of Christ elevate Hanukkah from minor- to major-league status?
But living in an extended family as well as a country that celebrates holidays that range from Hanukkah and Christmas to the Chinese New Year with stops along the way for Druidism, I also understand why "holiday" appears on everything from the president's greeting card — with three pets frolicking in the snow — to the office party. Conversely, one of the hallmarks of the culture wars is the way tolerance of diverse beliefs is reframed as intolerance for the majority.
We are familiar with seasonal blow-ups over church and state. Some end in absurd compromises that put Baby Jesus, the Maccabees and Frosty in a December trinity. These cases are often thinly veiled battles for ownership of public space.
But this year's blow-up over church and store? A battle between Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays? I thought religion was supposed to remind us that there's a separation between pew and marketplace.
If the religious right is worrying about the erosion of Christmas, maybe it should focus more on the megachurches around the country that colluded to close on Sunday, Dec. 25, for fear they wouldn't have enough customers. Christmas, they demurred, is a family day. HappyFamilyday to you?
As for this orchestrated seasonal battle, let's give the final word to the Druids. The mistletoe was also sacred to our Celtic forebears. That ritual kiss beneath the mistletoe was meant to seal the end of a dispute. The war against Christmas? How about a little peace on Earth.
BonoVoxSupastar said:
This is exacly the arrogance and the problem we have here in America.
nathan1977 said:
Isn't it arrogant to tell 80% of the population what they can and can't say?
No one's telling anyone they HAVE to say Merry Christmas. But at the same time, don't freedom of speech rules allow people to say whatever they like?
BonoVoxSupastar said:
Oh wait!!! Now this is a freedom of speech issue?
nathan1977 said:
Isn't it? Oh, I see....it only is if you say it is?
A principle (in this case, the right of people to say what they please, particularly when it's not oppressing anyone else) is either correct or incorrect. Period.
Unless we're going to be honest and admit that, deep down, the principle at work is "I don't want to hear anything I don't want to hear."
Because that is ultimately what we're saying, isn't it?
Enlightening.
BonoVoxSupastar said:It's very telling, when it's the "christians" who don't seem to get this.
nathan1977 said:It seems rather self-serving when an extreme minority demands everyone cowtow to their needs.
"Thinking of yourself vs. everyone around you" indeed. Take a look in the mirror.
nathan1977 said:
Take a look in the mirror.
And that is exactly how this Jew would feel, "left out." Not persecuted, not traumatized, not seething with rage...just "left out." Is "left out" such a sinister, self-righteous, subversive emotion? Are schoolteachers and Presidents who wish not to have anyone feel "left out," and seek to accomplish that by having an inclusive classroom party or mass-mailing card, thereby guilty of being spineless cowards, kowtowing to a bossy and subversive minority hell-bent on scorning everyone else's beliefs?Honestly, if I were Jewish and I got something from the President of my country that just said Christmas, I'd feel left out. This shouldn't be an issue...
As a business they do, unfortunately, have the right to dictate what greeting their employees use. Extremely stupid from a customer service standpoint, however--and a deliciously ironic illustration of my point that refusal to "give in" to simple considerateness does not make one a champion in the epic battle for "free speech" against the imaginary "PC holiday" gremlins.Teta040 said:We are ORDERED to greet EVERY customer with "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays"...I wanted to shoot back, that it was some religious right group flexing its political muscle, and who gave these groups power over al other groups to influcnece al we talk, and Sears gave in like awet rag, but I didnt.
I regret the misunderstanding. I did, indeed, mistake your comment as referring exclusively to people who might object to "Merry Christmas."BonosSaint said:Yolland, I didn't take the bulk of your post directed at me, but you quoted me in a way that didn't reflect my point (which may be the fault of my earlier post, if I did not make it clear).
I have always found Christmas beautiful, as well. Particularly the religious version. And I don't mind at all that its symbols and stories are so much more culturally prominent and pervasive than those of my own tradition. I know who I am and who my people are.Happy Chanukah would have rolled right off our backs, though. And yeah, we moved back home to the majority. I had a taste, though not the full meal, of the specific exclusion you speak of. We got humbled pretty quickly out of our exclusively Christian previous lifetime, but we didn't have to deal with that particular exclusion forever. But I thought the Jewish holidays were beautiful and I am still touched by many Jewish symbols.
"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."
I second that. Well said!I guess we must have it pretty damn good in this country when these are the "issues" we face each day.