Long ago, I decided that “Xmas” was mildly tacky so I always write it as is, and I don’t have a problem wishing people “Merry Christmas.” I just mean it in a kindly, holiday kinda spirit. (Even though I’m a proud heathen.) And I just don’t get why the conservatives have to turn this into a flame war every damn year. I subscribe to The Conservative Voice so I’m hip to what they’re writing about. This arrived this morning in my e-mail:
Taking Christ out of Christmas… Do We Really Have to Take it Anymore?
Well I see that the scrooges on the left side of the political spectrum are at it again … taking down Christmas trees, renaming items as “holiday” such as holiday cards, holiday tree, holiday party, holiday gifts, etc. The list just keeps going on. …
You liberal scrooges, you! Good lord. Well, who better than Keith Olbermann to put this crap to rest with this “Worst Person(s) in the World” nightly award on MSNBC’s Countdown:
… the winners, FOX News again. Remember last night, we told you that despite this phony baloney story they concocted about liberals trying to replace Christmas recognitions with the generic happy holidays? They’re own Web site was selling Bill O’Reilly Holiday ornaments for your holiday tree instead of Bill O’Reilly Christmas ornaments for your Christmas tree? Today they change it. The Web site now identifies them as Christmas ornaments. Hypocritical sons of—oh, well.
This holiday time of year, let’s be forgiving. Let’s just all be happy in the knowledge that somebody is finally going to hang Bill O’Reilly’s ornaments from a tree somewhere! FOX News Channel, today’s worst persons in the world!
Read the (full transcript of the Thursday show.)
Then Crooks and Liars spotted this sweet twist in Fox’s phony, hypocritical Christ-in-Christmas campaign:
“Fox News Poll: Not Fooled by Bill O’Reilly’s fake Christmas war
“It’s pretty bad Mr. O’Reilly, when your constant pounding of the ‘War on Christmas’, theme doesn’t even resonate with your own audience,” writes C&L.
By the way, while we’re talking about “worst persons in the world,” Crooks & Liars also has an excellent piece on how Bill O’Reilly promotes internet smear sites. John Amato at C&L also takes Ann Coulter to task in this same piece for her cruel, thoughtless behavior towards an actress who dared to disagree with her. Coulter published the actress’s address and phone number, and refuses to take it down. The actress is receiving threatening phone calls. This is goes beyond the pale.
Oh brother! This nonsense again. What our little RW nutcases need to understand, if they don’t, is that it is the merchants. . .read that Corporate America, that wants to spread their HOLIDAY sales to non-christians and thus, do not wish to offend any sensibilities, but rake in more and more cash during this spending frenzie we call Cristmas (which I have never been able to correlate to what it is supposed to be celebrating).
Have you noticed all the “happy news” stories that the news channels and nightly news shows are running about merchant sales?
It’s nauseating. Talk about propaganda.
This is just one more step in their plan. The worst thing we can do is to misuderestimate them because unlike the Democrats they have “a plan”. Fox is just softening up the blow for what is coming… this has nothiing at all to do with Christmas… they just want to put people in a position of
“You are either with God… or against God”
IT IS A FRAME PEOPLE…. Which is why understanding and combatting frames is of utmost importance.
It is just one more step on their road to complete dominence. Because this is what is really coming down the road…
and this at the World Bank
… but by all means let’s elect more Democrats who think like them…because we are all gonna be able to squeeze our asses behind that tiny little “d” after their names when the shit hits the fan. (I hope this is beginning to sink in that collaborating with these idiots is just digging our own graves deeper).
You know who takes the Christ out of Christmas the most shamelessly? Christians, that’s who. They’re the ones outfitting their houses with decorated trees, wiring them with blinking lights, putting cut-outs of Santa Claus on their front lawns, exhausting themselves and emptying their wallets in frenzied consumerism.
And let’s not forget the parties and the food, glorious food, and booze swilling. And the clothes: every granny must have a red sweater with raindeer embroidered across her chest to go with her holly wreath errings, and let’s not forget those mother-daughter velvet dresses with the lace collars.
Every bit of this is rampant materialism dressed up in Pagan motifs. It gives me such a laugh. What part of this circus-like celebration has anything to do with the Teachings of Jesus?
Yes, I do know there are Toys-for-Tots and Holiday Harvest Food Banks and carolers do sing at hospitals and retirement homes. But do these good works comprise even 10% of Christian activity at this time of year?
This is a really good rant. You also made me laugh … relatives were always buying my mother some tacky sweatshirt with trees or reindeer on it.
I pretty much hate holidays. Except for Halloween because the costumes are a lot of fun. And the 4th for the fireworks (although they do terrify animals, and that’s very bad).
Oh, yeah. I guess I wore them. My mind was always on candy 😉
I’m so pleased that I gave you a laugh. When I was sorting my mother’s clothing, I came across 10, count them 10, Christmas sweaters! And the jewelry! There was a gold and enamel lapel pin of Rudolph with a ruby for his nose. The best was a small wreath pin with a tiny battery so its lights twinkled. Must have been an impulse buy waiting in line at K-Mart.
I actually love decorating my house for Yule/Winter Solstice. Bringing armloads of holly and ivy into the house and twisting them into garlands and wreaths. I used to have a little balsam fir in a terra cotta planter that I hauled in from the patio and dressed up with lights, gold and silver balls and a wondrous gold 5-pointed star at the top. I love the smell of all that greenery inside when it’s too cold to go out.
Every year, I used to have a Winter Solstice party. The invitations would actually say that. I’d invite all my Christian co-workers and friends along with my Pagan pals and the Christians never got it, never suspected they were attending anything other than a Christmas party with a quaint theme. har.
Christmas and Halloween are the two holy seasons, Pagans can share with Christians without arousing any suspicions. This year, with us moving on the 7th, I’ll be too busy unpacking and organzing but, next year, O boy, I’m gonna do this kind of fun stuff again.
You are so spot-on, LOL.
Mrs. K.P. – who is, shall we say, “post-Christian” 😉 – will be absolutely delighted when I point this out to her tonight. Especially when visiting with her talibaptist mother…
Historically, the Catholic Church specifically made it a policy to co-opt pagan symbolism in the post-Roman-empire period in order to ease the conversion of the “pagans” into “Christendom.” (In Roman times, the term that’s come down to us as “pagan” would have been the equivalent of our “hick” or “hillbilly,” as the city folk took up the new religion sooner than their more conservative country bretheren.) This took well into the Middle Ages to complete, after which (once they were the majority) they could engage in the persecutions of the “burning times,” but that’s a story for a different day.
Just came from Dan Froomkin’s, where I found this hilarity:
Is it Fitzmas yet??
That’s a riot! Froomkin is funny and clever.
Did you see the doofus sort of singing a Christmas carol last night? I swear that any of us heathens could remember the lyrics better than he who was just mouthing along, and not very well.
I haven’t recommended anything over at Big Orange for a good six months, so I’m going to allow myself the luxury – in the spirit of goodwill for the holidays, LOL – of recommending this diary, which ties in with our conversation on this thread.
As if we don’t have enough real problems. O’Reilly isn’t interested in reality just like the people he sucks up too. O’Reilly is seeing WMD in every christmas tree now. Guess what I’m agnostic and still say Merry Christmas. I have no problem when you delude yourself into believing. I do have a problem when you believe falsehoods that get people killed. I don’t care what you call your holiday. I do care that your other delusion is getting a lot of soldiers and innocents killed.
BO is a lying, disgusting, obnoxious yellow journalist.
http://www.oreilly-sucks.com
I just got done doing some research for a post I did over on Big Orange. I’m not going to link to it, because it is an evil, evil document and I don’t really want to drive traffic to it, but back in 1905 the Okhrana (the Czar’s secret police) published a piece that translates into English as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Protocol 4, section 4 calls for the replacement of spirituality with materialism.
So 100 years ago, people were pushing a Big Lie about how religion was being replaced with materialism and blaming their favorite whipping-boy of the time for it.
Let’s be honest, there’s plenty of commercialization of Christmas going on. One of my favorite Christmas pieces, Green Chri$tma$, had Stan Freberg tackling this subject as far back as 1959, and he wasn’t the first one to discover the concept. But — and I am only speaking for myself here, other people’s opinions may differ — I don’t have any trouble separating Christmas the continuation of various pagan holidays from Christmas the religious celebration. Especially if you accept the research of scholars who pretty much agree that Yeshua bin Yusuf, whose name comes to us in its Greek form Jesus, wasn’t born anywhere near December. Some say it was in the fall, some in the spring (some even think it might have been during the Passover, which would have made Jerusalem and its environs — even as far out as Bethlehem — unusually crowded, with the combination of the census and the Passover traffic) — but they pretty much all reject the idea that the shepherds would have been out with the flocks during the winter.
Damn! I just love your posts! 🙂
I shared it with some hockey pals with nods to you, of course. Thank you!!!
Hey, I have a fake tree… does that make me a fake heathen?? 🙂 Actually it’s a really lovely tree and my son likes it because it doesn’t “smell” and Danni doesn’t have to cry about killing a tree or owls house.
We both have fake trees, although in my case it’s as much out of concern for those of us in the family with allergies as it is to not killing off trees.
I’ll gladly accept the label of “fake heathen” as long as those are real goodies underneath the tree. 🙂
(Oops, did I say that? heh)
they’d be able to put together that merchandising “Christmas” crap is not “honoring” Christianity, but negating what little sanctity it still had left. It might even cross their mummified brain tissue that Target and KMart and Hallmark and Avon are not really run by what anybody that has ever been called “progressive”. I don’t watch Fox much, but remember that last year they were extending “holiday” greetings to their viewers. Did they change that this year? Will their windbags for Jesus be boycotting them?
I no longer say Merry Christmas unless somebody else says it first. Otherwise it’s happy holidays. On cards now I wish the recipients a happy Winter Solstice, which is at least a real thing, not a silly old myth. Despite all that, Christian iconography still activates a certain remembered sense of warmth and familiar comfortableness in me. Too bad Christians had to go and ruin it all and make their own supposed faith contemptible and repulsive. With advocates like O’Reilly and the rest, Christianity has no further need to wonder about Satan — he’s right there on the tube and in the pulpit. I guess that must be what “minions” means.
I wonder if the pathetic Jews for Jesus and the like might be finally waking up yet? Nah.
Here’s wishing every body a merry and fun Yule! Get that tree god up and covered with decorations. Have a yule log. Make Eggnog. Lift a glass to the Winter Soltice and the Winter King! Have Yule and Kwanzaa and Hannukah parties. Have an extra plate for the unexpected guest. Rent the original English black and white “Christmas Carol” with Alistar Sims which is the Yule spirit made visible.
May the ghost of Marley pursue the enemies of the Yule!
I love eggnog.
Say, Silk Soy Eggnog is REALLY good!
either deep denial or irony.
omg im so jealous 🙂 i havent seen any of that here..but i have to get some now
The thing is, as Knoxville Progressive points out above, that during the conversion of Europe, the church had a policy of co-opting earlier pagan traditions and sacred sites. The Church were I grew up is placed by a spring regarded as sacred in viking times. It was simply re-christened The Virgin Mary’s Well, and voila!
And the same applies to Christmas. The winter solstice was celebrated by all pagan Europeans, and indeed most cultures across he globe. Whether Jesus was born at that time, is open to discussion, but it was mighty helpful to claim that he did, when it came to winning the hearts and minds of pagans loath to part with a cherished tradition.
When I was a child we’d still put a plate of porridge in the barn for the nisser, the fairy people that make up part of the elements that later went into the modern image of Santa Claus. And we’d get dressed in costumes and go julebukk, a tradition like Halloween, but closer in spirit and “look” to samhain. It goes on and on, the tree, with roots back to Yggdrasil, the world tree etc. etc.
In fact here in Norway very few of the traditions connected with christmas were traceable to christianity as such. So as an atheist, I have no problem at all celebrating christmas. One of my coolest christmas celebrations was at a party at a friend’s who’s Åsatruer, a norse neo-pagan. We had more mead than any human being should filter through their livers, beef from horse and roasted a whole pig. Were I not an atheist, it would be Odin for me! Any religion that advocates fucking on christmas can’t be all bad;)
Traditions seldom belong to one faith alone, and they do have value, beyond their transitory ties to some religion or other.
and I’m an atheist…something.
We love Christmas. I have no problem saying “Merry Christmas” to someone, nor does “Happy Holidays” bother me. We light the menorah–because it’s fun–we have a Christmas tree, we share a few presents, we’ve even gone caroling.
It’s just secular fun for us. The only drag in previous years has been the over-the-top crass commercialism of it.
But this “War on Christmas” bullshit the right wing invented has killed it for me. I argued (quietly, out of earshot of the boy), that by lighting a tree, we make ourselves indistinguishable from the hateful Xians down the street. Was I stupidly making myself a soldier in this invented “war?”
I lost the argument. We put the tree up last night. Good thing, too. I don’t feel right without Christmas.
I hope everyone enjoys the winter solstice time in whatever way pleases them. And fuck you, Bill O’Reilly.
This very topic was going on with my hockey friends.
I say “Peace On Earth”. Waiting for some zealot to blast me for it, too.
Today people are busily decorating their offices for Christmas… Today as my dear friend momagainstthedraft said – ten Marine families will have very different holidays for the rest of their lives.
But… Repugnants and the Apathetic will say I’m an UnAmerican Scroogette for even bringing this up.
Peace on Earth my friends… Peace!
Abortion is no longer an issue since pro-choice Republican women now know what Alito is about.
Gay marriage is no longer an issue since Massachusetts has proven that gay marriage reduces the rate of divorce. 😉
Guns ceased to be an issue with Paul Hackett and other hunters stepping forward.
Bush single-handedly removed immigration as a wedge issue with his speech last week.
Mixing church and state is not popular even with a lot of evangelicals and Baptists.
A court just took care of Intelligent Design as a legitimate “scientific” issue.
What wedge issue is left? Putting the X back in Xmas, I mean putting the Christ back in Xmas, I mean saying Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holy Days.
They have reached the bottom of the wedge issue barrel.
I got bored enough the other day at the dentist’s office to actually hear the words of the xmas musak they had running nonstop. Was startled to hear something like: So let’s give thanks to the Lord above, ’cause Santa Claus is coming tonight.
Just amazing.
I worry more about putting non-Christ (be it government or commerce) into Christmas. Down with Santa Claus!
A “Christ”mas tree in the white house is not acceptable.
A holiday tree is since multiple religious groups have trees and non-religous uses of the tree exist. A nativity display on government property is not acceptable unless it is accompanied by
displays of a diverse number of religions and non-religious displays (such as solstice related). A nativity display at a retail establishment isn’t a big deal for me. Renting out
a high school auditorium for a christmas event outside school hours I don’t really have a problem with. Almost anyone can rent it. No one should be denied rental of the auditorium because of opposition by religious groups and any religious groups that do this must be denied their own uses.
Christmas as a national holiday is problematic. Winter solstice would be ok, though the holiday would need to move a few days. But christmas/yule is supposed to be celebrated on the solstice, anyway but christians were too dumb to adjust for changes in the calendar.
in the fact that “an impressive 48%” of Fox news watchers adopt the sane common sense view that there isn’t a secular left-wing war on Christmas, while “only 42%” take the absolutely batshit crazy get-back-in-the-asylum-you-freak view that there is.