I have way too much to say on this subject to be organized just yet, so look for more in my diaries later. Let me just start here by how I came to think this ‘War On Christmas’ is not merely an attention-grabbing red herring tossed up by Bill O’Rielly. It’s actually a seed of something much more ominous and horrible for our future as Americans. This is not just a War in some delusional pundit’s mind, it’s real, blood will spill, and it just might be mine..
When I first heard of this ‘War On Christmas’, I, like all good viewers was filled with outrage. I mean how wrong is anyone who would take Christ out of Christmas? These people must be stopped. But How? Mr. O’Rielly and all his fellow brave harbingers of this ill news didn’t answer any of the usual Whos, Hows or Whys – only What. I had to join this fray – in the name of every tinsel strewn present I or any other good child received under their family’s Christmas tree. There was no sitting this one out.
If only to show those coalstocking people what for, I thought short and soft:
The answer was obvious. The only way to support Christmas was to buy as much product from stores with the special code words boldly advertising it’s participation in this Great Struggle of the 21st Century: “Christmas Sale”. These brave compatriots need to be rewarded.
Before I set out on my 3rd purely patriotic shopping spree (first two sprees were, to quote the president’s choice re-use of someone else’s words, to ‘keep America rolling’), I looked outside my window at my sleepy little river town’s winter lights blazing, and heard the town church’s bells ringing and the proud citizens waging their person counter attacks by wishing their enemies and everyone a ‘Merry Christmas’ on their lawns, doors and window sills, in the cafes and on the sidewalks. I was never more proud, a nation’s true grit is shown at times of War. This was never more true than in America this day, my friend.
Sure enough, even formally ‘suspect’ stores had joined in, even joining together to supply a free gift wrapping station set up in an empty storefront. All to ease the pains of America’s new Christmas Defense warriors as they go about sticking it to the Grinch. Their credit cards slicing through this anti-Christian malevolence, their perfectly packaged purchases each a stone in the new city wall that keeps the Christ in.
Spend! Spend! Dear G-d, Spend! Mr. O’Reilly has implied that Christmas itself depends upon it. My heart was filled with joy: Just like with Iraq, it’s just nice to start a War we’re sure to win.
So, the ‘What’ is the War On Christmas. The How is through semantic and semiotic manipulations, like using the dread ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’. Then I considered the Why. I mean, how awful a person must you be to want to take the Christ out of Christmas. Mr. O’Rielly marched out three or four experts on something-or-other who decried the motivations of the evil, and monolithic Anti-Christmas movement and also decried their undue sway over our retailers and media.
I began to see where O’Rielly was taking me and I went there. I hated these bastards at this point. Whoever these folks turn out to be. I can’t wait until Mr. Bill gets one of them on The Factor. As soon as he ferrets one of these rats out willing to pipe up, he’ll get him into the No Spin Zone, if only to be fair and balanced. I also hope he knows how disconcerting it is to be fighting an enemy which has yet to be named: I want to strike, strike from the depths of my most primal, religious anger, but at who’s breast? Where is my dragon? I’ll pierce his demon heart and instead of dragon blood, the blood of Christ will wash over this putrid Earth and cleanse it once and for all until the end of Days, to mix a few metaphors. So, like any viewer, I asked myself the next obvious question.
At whom do I strike?
Who is the enemy? Who’s name is so feared by even Mr. O’Rielly that to utter it on TV would cause his destruction (why else wouldn’t he tell us)? Who wants to keep the gift buying going during the ‘Holidays’ while removing Christ? Who has such influence over Retail and Media and holds the very odd opinion that Christ is not the Alpha and Omega of December shopping binges?
I, like any fair-minded viewer, came up with only one answer:
The Jews.
There. I said it. What us O’Rielly viewers who really pay attention can see is that they are using their undue influence over the media and retail to try and de-Christ America. I live in NJ and there wasn’t much of an audience here for these ideas (for some reason) but then I went to Kentucky for Christmas with my girlfriend’s large, Republican, Southern Baptist family. They got it. They really got it on a number of counts.
A large, salt-of-the-Earth family, they’ve always felt free to talk openly in front of me about setting up conveyor belts with meathooks on them from downtown to the river for nigger disposal or of ambiguous future plans for ‘them Mexicans’. Never a word about the Jews, but perhaps only because they know I am half Jewish. Now they could talk about Jews in terms of this anti-Christmas movement. And they did. Never once mentioning the Jews, everyone just knew what they we talking about. I think they believed that anti-Semitism would easily be hidden somehow from me, behind this War on Christmas screen. I did nothing to let on otherwise, basking in my more experienced fellow pro-Christmas-in-Christmas warrior’s knowledge of the world. By repeatedly going over how the same spheres of influence traditionally assigned Jews were in play in this War and how those manipulations had a negative effect on “Christmas” (which was taking on a broader meaning by the second), they could talk openly about a War against Jews without saying it, if you follow me. I practically went into the bathroom with a hacksaw to cut my left hand (the Jewish one, obviously) off then and there. I decided to just keep an eye on it until I could get out of these wonderful people’s Christ-centric holiday festivities. Christ was so omnipresent in their lives, no one had to even mention him at all outside of this War On Christmas conversation for the whole delightful gathering.
How comforting it was to be amongst such a pure and insightful people. I finished off my thrice-boiled greenbeans, jello and ‘seven layer salad’ Christmas dinner thinking that there have never been a people in all our history as blessed and free as these here American Christians. To try to remove Christ from Christmas is to attack freedom and all that is blessed. Man, I hate Jews. First Christ and now Christmas. Motherfuckers. The fact that my mother is Jewish is a matter for therapy much later, for now is a time of War and there is no room for self-doubt.
I sleep more comfortably nightly in knowing that the American Center-Right is now embracing anti-Semitism more overtly every day, that these ideas have popular support, that the same neo-fascist, America First money that brought both Hitler and the Bush dynasty to power in the first place has taken the reigns of the worlds largest economic and military power and has their media arm framing the chronic, yet traditionally minor conflicts between Secular Jews and Christians in terms of a “War”. A war for the soul of our very nation, between Christ and the Christ Killers.
If I could kick half of my own ass, I would. Beyond the greater war of cultures, it is a War for my very soul, being claimed by both my Methodist and Jewish heritages and identifying meaningfully with both. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out, and I am just glad Mr. O’Rielly decided to stir this hornet’s nest. Meanwhile, I am still shopping till I’m dropping so we don’t all lose a good thing.
——- Postlude ———-
Someone else on Booman Tribune first wrote the following thought, which I can’t find right now to quote, but it is worth mis-quoting: ‘Bush is delivering an America that the Extreme Left has been warning against and the extreme Right has been promising.’
