Merry You-Know-What
Thomas Sowell on the now-controversial (if not downright offensive) phrase "Merry Christmas":
It was just a small thing but I was taken aback when I received a memo saying that the offices at work would be shut down during "winter closure." Then it dawned on me that "winter closure" was what we used to call "Christmas vacation."Fidei Defensor also has a well-thought-out post on the whole "Merry Christmas" brouhaha over at his blog College Catholic:
Various colleges and universities have long since stopped calling it the Christmas vacation. A large shopping mall in San Francisco was decked out in all sorts of holiday decorations, including a huge tree, with Santa Claus sitting next to it -- but nowhere was there that now-controversial phrase, "Merry Christmas."
The idea is that any mention of Christmas might offend people who are not Christians -- and that this should be avoided at all costs.
As someone who does not keep track of my friends' religions, I have undoubtedly over the years sent out Christmas cards to people who were Jewish or non-religious. Yet none has protested or seemed to be traumatized.
Christmas is now one of many things that make us walk on eggshells during this supposedly liberated era. Are we all wimps?
[More]
Up until this point I was all about the outrage, the its time to strike back, get tough attitude, on every store that won't say Christmas while owing its economic survival to it, sneering at every School that would have Children sing Kwanzaa songs but not Silent Night, every town that tossed out its Nativity scene and then lit a "Holiday Tree."My Comments:
I don't mean to sound like some limp wristed PC hack saying, "We shouldn't impose our views on them," but, well heck I just said it.
If what most people are celebrating these days isn't Christmas why try to kid ourselves into thinking that it is? We can cover the cultural cesspool with the brilliant cloak of Christmas sure, but why bother, why risk losing it in the mud? We'll have our Christmas and know how meaningful and special it is ...
I must respectfully disagree with my friend's foregoing comments, not because he isn't right - because from a theological perspective he is right - but because we are in the midst of a culture war in this country that, if lost, will edge us further toward European-style secularism, which is overtly hostile to religion.
Capitulating to the "Happy Holidays" mentality merely because what our consumer-driven culture celebrates as "Christmas" really isn't Christmas would be just one more nail in America's coffin. It has become abundantly clear that if the secularists could work their will "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' upon his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart." They must not be given this victory.
So, I say "Merry Christmas to all!" and "God bless us, every one!"
posted by Pro Ecclesia 9:02 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
My Christmas tree has been up for almost two weeks, there near our living room window, clearly visible to anyone who passes by. Nobody has tried to take it. Nobody has harrassed me or written a letter to the editor about it.
With the exception of people who I know don't celebrate the holiday, I wish everyone "Merry Christmas." I haven't been accosted or called a Christofacist.
There is no "War on Christmas." It's a concoction, based on a long-standing anti-Semitism of such great Christians as Henry Ford who, in his 1921 book The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, wrote:
. . . most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated Someone’s Birth . . . Now, all this begins with the designers of the cards.
I'm not suggesting that you're an anti-Semite. I have no reason to think you are; in fact, without going back through your archives, I think I remember some posts that would have me believe you're definitely not.
I do think it's shameful, though, that Bill O'Reilly and his ilk peddle this "War on Christmas" notion without acknowledging its history.
"I'm not suggesting that you're an anti-Semite. I have no reason to think you are; in fact, without going back through your archives, I think I remember some posts that would have me believe you're definitely not."
You're right. Definitely NOT. Which is, I'm sure, a relief to my wife and kids who, although Catholic, are ethnically Jewish.
Jay,
Thanks for saying I am right from a theolgical perspective. I very much see your opinion and I'm glad you see mine.
Perhapes I am just jaded to see peers of mine who I know to be unpracticing or unbeliving getting excited about Christmas and the mounds of expensive stuff they will be getting.
Like I said I would just as well distance the real Christmas from the faux Christmas and if that means having to say Happy Holidays thats the price we pay.
Its sort of like, would you want an adultury commiting person to recieve Eucharist at Mass just for the sake of another person getting communion or would you prefer if they did the honest thing and just didn't take communion?
As for the culture war on a whole. Its tough for me to project long term, I am rather young a lot of things that shock my fellow blggers seem to me like the way things have always been (though I do remember Christmas trees and nativity scenes in Public School CLassrooms when I was very young.)
Post a Comment
<< Home