What war against Christmas?

No Dan, Donna Halper exposes nothing but her own intolerance for Christians and Republicans. In order to make her weak arguments somewhat plausible, she avoids any mention of Christmas vacation in the schools being replaced by “Winter Recess,” all references to Christmas yanked from kindergarten musicals and long-standing traditional nativity scenes being torn down after one person –Halper herself, perhaps–takes offense. If one pretends there aren’t any battles, how can there be a war on Christmas? After all, Halper heard Christmas music being played at the store, so that settles it! Most despicable, however, is this sentence; “Looking back at magazine and newspaper essays from that era, you find there were quite a few Americans who wanted America to remain all white and all Protestant. (Sometimes I wonder if some on the religious right still think that would make America a better country.)”Obviously, “religious right” is code for Republican. Apparently Halper hopes nobody notices the likes of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Justice Clarence Thomas and the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself – all Republican and black. In declaring racism the domain of the religious right, she omits the story of Michael Steele. During a 2002 debate between the black Republican Steele and Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend for Maryland Lt. Governor, Townsend’s campaign handed out Oreo cookies to the audience. It was also a left-wing website that posted a repugnant, doctored picture of Mr. Steele as “Simple Sambo”. Who needs the religious right when modern-day racist Democrats abound? Perhaps this nation’s many prominent black Republicans were “forced to convert” to Republican much like the Jewish soldiers in the American Revolution who Halper alleges were forced into Christianity. In Halper’s demented world, no consideration is given to the possibility that many blacks identify more closely with Republicans, especially on moral issues or that the conversion of the colonial Jews may have come from a deeply personal and spiritual call to salvation. The notion that neither blacks nor Jews might freely break with political or religious norms is in itself racist and anti-semetic.O-FISH-L

Now that I read the column I have two thoughts — One, I have missed the opportunity all these years to thank Donna Halper for introducing RUSH to the US. Two, she really doesn’t address the issue. The article is current and the author is local, but it’s a mishmosh of an argument.She left trailing the line about Henry Ford. So I typed it into Google… and turned up the razor-sharp comment by Hendrik Hertzberg, two years ago. Hertzberg alertly references Michelle Goldberg, who covered this well in her recent book.

For Fish: Why is it so hard to understand that it is not anti-Christian or anti-Christmas to take note of the fact that not all of us celebrate it? If I say Happy Birthday to you, because it is my birthday, that makes me a fool — why would I assume that you also have the same birthday that I do? Similarly, if I insist that all the children in the schools should have a Christmas holiday, because my children celebrate Christmas, that is foolish. And besides, it’s rude. Yes, most people hereabouts do celebrate Christmas, but it doesn’t make it any less rude to presume that everyone does. Fish, take a moment and be honest: Do you not understand the difference? No one is against you celebrating your holiday. No one is against Christians here and everywhere celebrating. Just stop insisting that everyone celebrate your holiday. It’s rude. (Can you not see the difference between telling a Christian “Merry Christmas,” which everyone thinks is a fine idea, and telling a stranger “Merry Christmas,” which is presumptious?) And when people point out how rude it is to insist that everyone celebrate your holiday, stop claiming that you’re being persecuted. It just makes you look silly.

Dan:I’ve got to agree with Fish. Halper’s harping is a poorly veiled rant against the Christian Right and Republicans. Her hatred for both is very clear.Heck, I wouldn’t call myself religous at all but I believe most folks would agree that there’s a very small minority of the population that disdains the celebration of Christmas (which is there right). These individuals seem to work quite hard to limit the celebration of Christmas as much as they possibly can and they’ve enjoyed amazing success spreading their “holiday” wishes. By that reasoning we should never call holidays exactly what they are… a day to reflect on a certain event or person that earned the right to a national holiday in the first place. So now during Thanksgiving we should just say “Happy Holiday”?

Let’s keep in mind Dan that the “war on christmas” is just myth confabulated by the o-fishies of the world to lend them a claim to “victim status.” It’s a very precious thing, that tag of victimness — it helps excuse all the rage and bile, spewed at monolithic invented enemies. take away that precious totem and o-fish stands naked. it’s a very cowardly form of demagoguery, which explains why the canard has stood as long as it has.

Maybe you’d prefer Sally Quinn’s essay on the same resolution. “Earlier this year the House also passed resolutions honoring Islamic and Indian holidays but nothing that so equated a single faith with America and Americans. “How could this happen, in what will soon be 2008, in a pluralistic, multicultural, multireligious society, a society based on the concepts of religious freedom and separation of church and state? What were they thinking? “This resolution was as anti-American as anything Congress has ever passed. It disenfranchised and marginalized millions and millions of men and women, reducing them to second-class citizens.

Thank the mainline Protestant God that the Republican Party is here to stand up for me, the white, straight, Christian-born, college-educated male in this time of horrific persecution. I could barely find a parking space at Starbucks this morning, and I can’t find my Best of Phil Collins CD.I would blame the Jewish International Conspiracy, the ACLU, illegal Guatemalan landscapers and the Loony Left for ruining my hometown, if my mainline Protestant maternal grandfather hadn’t already determined that the Irish ruined it 120 years ago.Bob in PeabodyVictim

Here’s what I hate: People who say “Merry CHRISTMAS” to me in defiant tones, making it clear that they are not going to be having any of that “holiday” stuff. They have turned what was once a pleasant greeting into a point of contention. The folks who drummed up this fake “War on Christmas” have done more to ruin Christmas than anyone else.