Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Here Come the Christmas Enforcers

And so it begins...the annual tradition of "defending" Christmas from craven secularists who want to ban it:

"The Rev. Jerry Falwell is marshaling his forces to keep 'Merry Christmas,', 'Silent Night' and other religious references from being banished this holiday season.

Mr. Falwell, founder of Liberty University and the Moral Majority Coalition, has e-mailed 500,000 followers to urge support for the 'Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,' aimed at public officials, schools and retailers.

Because of course when it comes to Christmas...you're either for or against it.

They've already scored one "victory":

"Mr. Falwell has declared the campaign a success. The biggest skirmish has come in Boston, where complaints that a city Web site referred to a 'holiday tree' resulted in a switch to 'Christmas tree.'

'The Boston Christmas tree issue was a minor thing, but had it been allowed to stand, it would have sent a signal across the nation that people of faith should not be allowed public expression,' Mr. Falwell said."

Despite the fact that the country is virtually draped in red and green and silver and blue from the Thanksgiving weekend(or Halloween in the retail sector) until sometime around the middle of January, there are still those that insist if you're not celebrating Christmas enough, then you must be in favor of abolishing any public celebration of the holiday. This of course is ridiculous, for reasons I explained in my post on this very issue last year. I'd really like to avoid starting my own holiday tradition of attacking those who are defending Christmas; too much of that and I'll be arguing with people over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or what one hand clapping sounds like. But somehow, it puts me in the holiday spirit to blog about this.

P.S. Is there any irony to the fact that I'm listening to Christmas music as I write this?

2 comments:

Nat-Wu said...

It's funny (not) how Falwell says "it would have sent a signal across the nation that people of faith should not be allowed public expression". Yet I fail to see how his point is relevant to Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, or anyone else. You certainly don't see Falwell calling for a Kwanzaa-themed city holiday.

Of course we already know he's a hypocrite. He doesn't care about your faith, just his and his followers. What he means is that Christians should have primacy when it comes to holidays because Christian holidays are the only ones that matter.

Alexander Wolfe said...

You know...the persecution trick is the oldest trick in the book for uniting people. Christians are so diverse and different in their beliefs and backgrounds, the best way to unite them is to tell them that since they can't preach in public schools and some companies(being silly in my opinion)prefer "Happy holidays" to "Merry Christmas" then they're being persecuted and need to rally to oppose such persecution. Which leads me to wonder how it is they think they're being persecuted, when Christians around the time of Christ could look forward to a funeral on a tree or in the gut of a lion for daring to believe what they believed. Or where Christians in China can look forward to being sent to jail for proselityzing. Seriously folks...have some perspective.