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Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Opinion Palin & Co.: Shut up already about the mythical 'War on Christmas'
Posted By John Grooms on Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 2:18 PM
It's high time the rest of us told the "War On Christmas" peddlers to just shut up. Talk about knowing how to ruin a perfectly good holiday! The Bill O'Reillys and Sara Palins of the world, i.e., hucksters from the American conservative entertainment industry, are doing a great job of ruining Christmas for their own viewers and readers. O'Reilly, who popularized the weird notion that progressives are out to kill Christmas, is in full-blown culture warrior mode, Palin the Uber-Clueless has a new book called Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas, and other cultural conservative media figures have revved up their own War on Christmas vehicles. That's the bad news. Here's the worse news: the "Christmas is somehow in danger from evil libs" nonsense is spreading.
- cuttlefish (Flickr Creative Commons)
The once-respectable Heritage Foundation, now under the leadership of former U.S. Senator and serious Grecian Formula fan Jim DeMint of South Carolina, attacked an Agriculture Department plan to raise revenue for tree farmers as a "Christmas Tree Tax." The Christian Broadcasting Network blasted cities that try to respect this country's separation of church and state during the holidays as "modern grinches" who are "stepping up anti-Christmas efforts," coming down particularly hard on Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chaffee for dedicating a "holiday tree" at the statehouse. Just last week, FoxRadio gabber Todd Starnes mistakenly told his audience that an elementary school in Bulloch County, Georgia, had forced teachers to take down the Christmas cards in the school's halls. The school was inundated by the Fox faithful about this latest sacrilege before it was revealed that Starnes' report was wrong. Heck, Fox News even told viewers that the usual federal safety warnings at this time of year amounted to the government "telling you how to decorate your Christmas tree." You have to wonder what they think of mega-Christian football player Tim Tebow telling Coloradans "Happy holidays" in a new TV commercial. Maybe they'll perform an exorcism.
The War on Christmas promoters, particular media figures like Palin and O'Reilly, will make a bundle on their ridiculous claims, simply by repeating their annual December urban legend and spreading their silly anti-liberal paranoia, in books, paid public appearances or TV interviews that promote their fantasies of Yuletide martyrdom. Over the years, many conservative Christians have somehow convinced themselves that they are an increasingly endangered minority whose rights are being pulverized by leftist cultural terrorists, culminating in the War on Christmas. David Sirota, writing on salon.com, called the phenomenon "manufactured victimhood," saying, "In a majority-Christian nation whose politics and culture are steeped in Christianity, these zealots are interested in pretending their fellow Christians are somehow oppressed, contradictory facts be damned."
The way I see it, some Christians have been unable to digest the news that the country has changed and that the old, pre-'60s cultural model in which church-going Christianity was a dominant, driving force has been tempered by new ideas, attitudes and the nation's increased diversity. That doesn't mean there's a "war" on Christianity and certainly not on Christmas, which is still, need I remind you, America's favorite holiday - one in which sacred and secular elements are mixed together in millions of individual variations, and have been for decades. In the meantime, though, O'Reilly, Palin & Co. are dedicated to ruining their own fans' holidays by ginning up fake outrage. If that's not contrary to the spirit of Christmas, I don't know what is.
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