"The War on Christmas"

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Spiffor
In France, all christmas lights say "Happy holidays", considering that we have new year's eve one week after. The period is called "Holiday season", because that week is often a vacation with quite a bit of partying.

On Christmas night, people and TV say "Merry Christmas", while on New years Eve, people and TV say "Happy New Year". Is it any different in the US?

No that's about the same as the U.S. "Happy Holidays" was an easy way to buy a month long advertisement and have it remain relevant for the entire month. As a side benefit it might have also made some jews feel included, though I doubt that was a deciding factor initially. As time passed and we got more pc there has been more use of the term, but it is by no means a phrase that wholly owned by mincing pc types.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


OTOH the Anglicans eventually came to love the holiiday. Remeber Charles Dickinson?

Angie Dickinson's son?

[Az]

Originally posted by Ramo
Teh Jon Stewart couldn't do any better.

[loinburger]

I found an interesting editorial on the Christmas war, where by "interesting" I mean "agrees with my point of view."

Religious conservatives have a cause this holiday season: the commercialization of Christmas. They're for it.

The American Family Association is leading a boycott of the chain store Target for not using the words "Merry Christmas" in its advertising. (Target denies it has an anti-Merry-Christmas policy.) The Catholic League boycotted Wal-Mart in part over the way its Web site treated searches for "Christmas." Bill O'Reilly, the Fox network anchor who last year started a "Christmas Under Siege" campaign, has a chart on his Web site of stores that use the phrase "Happy Holidays," along with a poll that asks, "Will you shop at stores that do not say 'Merry Christmas'?"

This campaign - which is being hyped on Fox and conservative talk radio - is an odd one. Christmas remains ubiquitous, and with its celebrators in control of most branches of government, it hardly lacks for powerful supporters. There is also something perverse, when Christians are being jailed for discussing the Bible in Saudi Arabia and slaughtered in Sudan, about spending so much energy on stores that sell "holiday trees."

What is less obvious, though, is that Christmas's self-proclaimed defenders are rewriting history. They claim that the "traditional" American Christmas is under attack. But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is not defending America's Christmas traditions, but creating a new version of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration.

The concern that Christmas distracted from religious piety continued even after Puritanism waned. Throughout the 1800s, many religious leaders were still trying to hold the line. On the eve of the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in just 18 states.

Christmas gained popularity when it was transformed into a domestic celebration, after the publication of Clement Clarke Moore's "Visit from St. Nicholas" and Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly drawings, which created the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. The new emphasis lessened religious leaders' worries that the holiday would be given over to drinking and swearing, but it introduced another concern: commercialism. By the 1920's, the retail industry had adopted Christmas as its own, sponsoring annual ceremonies to kick off the "Christmas shopping season."

Religious leaders objected strongly. The Christmas that emerged had an inherent tension: merchants tried to make it about buying, while clergymen tried to keep commerce out. A 1953 Methodist sermon broadcast on NBC - typical of countless such sermons - lamented that Christmas had become a "profit-seeking period."' This ethic found popular expression in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." In the 1965 TV special, Charlie Brown ignores Lucy's advice to "get the biggest aluminum tree you can find" and finds a more spiritual way to observe the day.

This year's Christmas "defenders" are also rewriting Christmas history on another key point: non-Christians' objection to having the holiday forced on them. The campaign's leaders insist this is a new phenomenon. But as early as 1906, the Committee on Elementary Schools in New York City urged that Christmas hymns be banned from the classroom after a boycott by more than 20,000 Jewish students. In 1946, the Rabbinical Assembly of America declared that calling on Jewish children to sing Christmas carols was "an infringement on their rights as Americans."

Other non-Christians have long expressed similar concerns. For decades, companies have replaced "Christmas parties" with "holiday parties" and schools have adopted "winter breaks" instead of "Christmas breaks" out of respect for religious diversity.

The Christmas that O'Reilly and his allies are promoting fits with their effort to make America more like a theocracy, with Christian displays on public property and prayer in public schools.

Most Americans do not recognize this commercialized, mean-spirited Christmas as their own. Of course, it's not even clear the campaign's leaders really believe in it. Just a few days ago, Fox News's online store was promoting its "Holiday Collection" for shoppers. Among the items offered to put under a "holiday tree" was "The O'Reilly Factor Holiday Ornament." After bloggers pointed this out, Fox changed the "holidays" to "Christmases."

[Drake Tungsten]

Angie Dickinson's son?

No, the Bruce Dickinson's son...

[Guynemer]

HELL YES.

[Guynemer]

Originally posted by Sikander


Karl Rove isn't stupid, he knows that he wouldn't be where he is today by alienating African American and Muslim voters.

And how many African Americans voted for Bush in 2004?

[molly bloom]

Bringing back the true festive 'Christian' spirit:

"For preventing disorders, arising in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other communities, to the great dishonor of God and offense of others: it is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shilling as a fine to the county."

From the records of the General Court,
Massachusetts Bay Colony
May 11, 1659


And for good measure the English approach at home:

"More mischief is that time committed than in all the year besides ... What dicing and carding, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used ... to the great dishonour of God and the impoverishing of the realm."

So wrote the strict Protestant, Philip Stubbes, in the late 16th century, expressing the Puritan view that Christmas was a dangerous excuse for excessive drinking, eating, gambling and generally bad behaviour. (no sh!t!!!!)

This view was made law in 1644, when an Act of Parliament banned Christmas celebrations. Viewed by the Puritans as superfluous, not to mention threatening, to core Christian beliefs, all activities to do with Christmas, both domestic and religious, including attending church, were forbidden.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/society/ten_ages_gallery_03.shtml

and good old Morose Mather:

"The generality of Christmas-keepers observe that festival after such a manner as is highly dishonourable to the name of Christ. How few are there comparitively that spend those holidays (as they are called) after an holy manner. But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in mad Mirth …"

Revd. Increase Mather, 'A Testimony against Several Prophane and Superstitious Customs, Now Practiced by Some in New-England'

publ. London, 1687.


Let's put the 'Kee-rist!' back in Xmas.

[Last Conformist]

Most Americans don't like their Christmas commercialized?

Damn commies

[Japher]

Christmas commercialized?

Nevah!!!!!!!!1

[lord of the mark]

thanks to Molly for reminding us how little contemporary American fundies have in common with 17th century Puritans.

[lord of the mark]

"a dangerous excuse for excessive drinking"

Well thank G-d we havent got weeks of binge drinking associated with Hanukkah. The only time of the year its permissible to drink excessively is Purim night, where theres some, er, real mystical associations with it (seriously, on Purim night its the Reform and Conservative Jews who are likely to be sober, go to an any Orthodox shul on Purim night and you'll find at least a few men who are - pardon me - "as drunken as goyim".

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
thanks to Molly for reminding us how little contemporary American fundies have in common with 17th century Puritans.

It was the common reproach of old cast upon Christians, 'That they were all poor, weak, unlearned men.'

Cotton Mather.

Not so different....

[DinoDoc]

Christmas has nearly won the war! Only a few smilies left before it's victory is complete!

[Az]

Originally posted by Guynemer


And how many African Americans voted for Bush in 2004?

well, condi's family, for once!