This time of year, anyone who pays attention to the media is crying the same exasperated mantra. “ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS!” I had heard the phrase uttered enough times over the last few years but decided to dig deeper to get at the complexity that comprises this alleged “war”. National Catholic reporter Thomas Merton wrote an essay titled “The Root of War Is Fear” so I wondered what the fear behind the war on Christmas really was. I mean, obviously it’s not fear in the sense of the Grinch physically stealing Christmas and all the who-hash. At the bottom of the pundit brew pot, you’ll find dirty grounds of Communism, liberalism, multiculturalism, political correctness, as well as the gray area obscuring separation of church and state.
Top 10 Crusaders Fighting The War On Christmas, According to the Left:
The 2000 presidential candidate, political pundit and adviser to Nixon, Ford and Reagan Pat Buchanan warned in 1992 at the Republican National Convention, “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America: It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.” Later, December 13 2004, he wrote in his popular column, “What we are witnessing here are hate crimes against Christianity."
Gerald LK Smith (also known as "The Minister of Hate") once led the Share Our Wealth movement, proposed income caps, founded the America First Party and wasn’t shy about admitting his white supremacy convictions. In December of 1966, he wrote, “Xmas is a blasphemous omission of the name of Christ". He discussed how the United Nations had “given in to world Jewry” and “outlawed the name of Christ”. Santa Claus, he argued, was developed by the Jews to take the spotlight off Christ. Of course, Santa Claus is embedded in well-documented folklore all around the world and the “X” is actually an ancient abbreviation for “Christ”… but his angry psychobabble still bubbles to the surface of this war.
This audacious preacher and president of Caucus For America has no shortage of far-right opinions. “Outlawing Christian symbols here in America is what some hard-core liberals would love to do. They simply need the justifiable rationales,” he writes in a December 5th article in an online National Conservative magazine.
“For decades the American public has been snookered by the Left into believing that, in the name of ‘inclusion’ and multiculturalism, public symbols of Christmas and expressions of Christianity needed to be scaled back.”
He continues, “In their quest to appear noble, the destructive ACLU and the wily war machine on the Left have camouflaged their campaign against Christmas, claiming they are ‘protecting minority rights.’ Minorities have no right to make the majority feel like strangers in their own land”. He appears on numerous radio talk shows and writes articles like "Once Upon A Time When America Had Christmas" and "This Christmas Don't Let Them Turn Off The Lights."
In a reaction against liberal media seeping into classrooms with books like “My Two Dads”, Kids Ahead and Katharine Debrecht puts out children’s books called “HELP MOM! There Are Liberals Under My Bed” and "HELP! MOM! The 9th Circuit Nabbed the Nativity!"
Her Christmas story features a character named “Congresswoman Clunkton” that looks strangely like Hilary Rodham Clinton and another character called “Al Snore” bearing resemblance to Al Gore. Friends Johnny and Luke race to save Christmas and keep “The First Noel” from turning into “The First Toenail”. It’s hard to imagine that things like this exist in 2006… but… they do.
The AFA's site is currently littered with updates regarding the current War on Christmas. In an amusing rant, the AFA issues an "Action Alert" against Old Navy, Banana Republic and The Gap this year. "Old Navy doesn't want to offend non-Christians. But they sure don't worry about offending Christians," the AFA writes. They clarify exactly what busts their buttons: "Old Navy doesn't sell Christmas gifts. They sell 'holiday' gifts. They don't close their stores on Christmas. They close on 'holiday.' They don't observe 'Christmas morning,' they observe 'holiday morning.' They don't wish customers a 'Merry Christmas.' They wish them a 'happy holiday.' Old Navy boycotts Christmas. Old Navy has been boycotting Christmas for years." It's this sort of semantics that fuels entire books for comedian George Carlin.
They call themselves watchdogs of national policy, looking to maintain civil liberties. They believe in “Less Government, More Responsibility – and with God’s help – a better world.”
In the Christmas crusade, they first began talking about this in 1957, first warning of the retailer’s plot to unite the country under common, nonreligious symbolism.
Fox News Correspondent and author John Gibson found himself on countless talk shows discussing his controversially-titled book, “The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought”. His argument seemed to further pontificate the relevance of the 2005 “War On Christmas” and it was his hope that his book would breathe rationality back into an argument which had been largely carried out by “loonies”.
Gibson explains the premise behind his book on O’Reilly’s Christmas Under Siege segment. “Well, what we reveal in this book, The War on Christmas, is, we all know the nativity scene is a religious symbol -- and there's arguments about whether that should be in schools and public places. But we are talking about secular symbols. We are talking about banning Christmas trees, the colors red and green.”
In a televised sermon December 19th 2004, Reverend Jerry Falwell added more fuel to the Christmas war fire (which may have very well been in the form of a “friendship tree”). “When we began the Christmas season this year, we were all very much aware that a war was being waged by the Christmas grinches -- the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU], Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and other secularists, to steal Christmas from America. To not only take Christ out of Christmas, but to remove Christmas totally from the American scene. I am happy to announce today that we are winning the Christmas war,” he preached to his 24,000 member congregation.
“We have declared war on the left, and we're going to sue the hide off of everybody, everybody, who tries to inhibit the liberties of our children and our families from worshipping and honoring the Lord, as we in America are constitutionally allowed to do.”
Powered by The Liberty Counsel, Reverend Falwell ran the massive “Friend or Foe” campaign to scare the Christmas Grinches out of their dirty dens. Though he's now deceased, his Liberty Counsel carries on the traditional list of “Naughty and Nice” retailers for consumers. Anyone that proudly uses the word “Christmas” in signs, imagery, catalogs or their website is automatically on the “Nice” list, while places like Banana Republic who only offer a “Holiday Gift Guide” fall into the fiery pits of Naughty retailer Hell. The website encourages adamant citizens to hold “Save Christmas” rallies on their campuses and in their cities.
The Alliance Defense Fund is a group of Christian lawyers that have volunteered to handle complaints of "improper attempts to censor the celebration of Christmas in schools and on public property." They work in conjunction with Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Council. Their mission statement declares, “ADF was founded for a unique purpose: to aggressively defend religious liberty by empowering our allies, recognizing that together, we can accomplish far more than we can alone.”
“I did not want to do Christmas controversy stories this year,” O’Reilly told his radio audience last year. “You know, we did it last year, we won the war – Wal-mart, Macy’s and all the big stores are saying Merry Christmas and they’ve stopped ordering their employees not to say it, most of them – Best Buy and Crate & Barrel are two that still are ordering their people not to say Merry Christmas, which is the worst kind of Fascism you could possibly have.”
Last year Fox News ran an entire series called “Christmas Under Siege” featuring court decisions, school proceedings and stores that allegedly snuff the religiosity out of Christmas.
“The township of Saginaw, Michigan opposes red and green clothing on anyone," he reported in one disputed episode.
In another TV segment aired on December 7th 2006, O’Reilly adamantly criticized everything from parades to department stores. "All over the country, Christmas is taking flak. In Denver this past weekend, no religious floats were permitted in the holiday parade there. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled the 'holiday tree,' and no Christian Christmas symbols are allowed in the public schools. Federated Department Stores -- that's Macy's -- have done away with the Christmas greeting 'Merry Christmas.'”
On The O'Reilly Factor this year, Bill announced that he has officially "won the war on Christmas" and defeated the ACLU and activist judges that are assaulting his holy holiday. Even so, he's still enraged about it... and I'm sure the War on Christmas can only be buried alongside O'Reilly one day.
Peter Brimelow is undoubtedly the most infuriated pundit of all time. Having first coined the term “War On Christmas” in 1999, he industriously maintains a blog that painstakingly documents case after case of “attacks on Christmas”. Every year he runs a contest for readers to write in with the most outrageous attempt to abolish Christmas that they’ve witnessed; the winner gets a bottle of champagne and an autographed copy of his anti-immigration book Alien Nation and his War On Christmas story Jack’s Christmas. If you look carefully enough past his cries for money, you'll notice that his website VDARE.COM chronicles the attempted assassination of Jesus’ Birthday over the last six years and warns readers of “the militant minority of Christophobic cranks” that pervade this country. He also discusses war-time “successes” with Wal-mart and “failures” in Seattle. Generally he is still mad as Hell.
WHAT A JOKE!