I’d like to have a serious discussion about the so-called “War on Christmas” that garnered some attention late last year. There were a number of derisive responses to the concept of a war on Christmas, and I’m not so sure they were justified.
One response was that Christmas existed, and was so pervasive, that any “war” being fought was utterly ineffectual. I don’t agree that this observation rebuts the existence of a “War on Christmas” - it merely claims that the war is ineffective or futile. Other responses denied even the existence of any activites that could be fairly called a “War on Christmas.”
I believe that response fails as well, because I would argue that there are - or, rather, were - a number of events that could fairly be considered as waging war against the public celebration of Christmas. Of course, there are those that would acknowledge these events but contend that they were perfectly proper dispositions of an issue: for example, if I pointed out a case of a town removing a public Nativity scene as an example of the “war,” some would respond that this is not so much “war” as it is simply properly enforcing the law of the land.
As with any debate, defining the terms is a good place to start.
I contend that a series of events, each characterized by an effort to remove some traditional aspect of Christmas celebration from the public sphere, are in the aggregate fairly called a “War on Christmas.” Obviously, that’s a loaded term, in much the same way “pro-life” and “pro-choice” are loaded terms representing opposite sides of the abortion debate. But just as neither “pro-life” or “pro-choice” is an unfair description of the position taken by that side, so, too, “War on Charistmas” is not an inherently unfair description of a series of attacks intended to remove the celebration of Christmas from the public sphere. I grant that there could be MORE descriptive terms; still, this is not an undescriptive term.
So - when I say, “War on Christmas,” I mean simply a series of attacks each intended to remove the celebration of Christmas from the public sphere.
And I contend that there was, and is, an on-going War on Christmas.
Would you also define “public sphere” as “government-supported sphere”? If so, then of course there’s a real effort on to enforce the Constitutional separation of church and state. Are you suggesting that’s wrong?
Could you now please define what you mean by “celebration of Christmas in the public sphere”? [In preview: As ElvisL1ves said.]
If that means “use of tax revenues and/or government institutions to promote explicitly religious celebration of Christmas as an occasion of Christian worship”, then I agree with you that there is indeed a movement (of sorts) to oppose such activities, and I completely approve of it. (I think it’s still somewhat needlessly inflammatory to describe this movement as “a War on Christmas”, but I’ll let the term pass if you’re attached to it.)
If, on the other hand, you’re using “celebration of Christmas in the public sphere” in a more general sense to mean “social and popular Christmas traditions and customs”, like the much-ballyhooed greeting “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays”, then I call bullshit. There is no “war” or secular movement of any kind intended to prevent or discourage Christians from celebrating Christmas publicly in a Christian manner through traditional greetings, symbols, etc., as long as they’re not asking the government to sponsor them in doing so.
Obviously there’s some debate about the appropriate place of the gov’t in celebrating Christmas. To some it’s a religious holiday, which suggests that in taking part in it’s celebration the gov’t is endorsing religion. But it’s also a secular holiday for many people (my gf’s very religious Buddhist family happily gets a tree and exchanges presents every year). Some people have tried to use legal proceedures to enforce thier view in this debate, so I guess if those are “attacks” constituting a “war”, then a War on Christmas exists.
But that seems a bit bellicose, it’s more of a debate caused by the ambiguity of the meaning of Christmas then a war. And the image conjured by O’Reilly et. al. of a cabal of liberals plotting the destruction of a great religious holiday is silly. Even if the few (and it is a fairly small minority of liberals IMHO) who are staging these “attacks” were to get everything they wanted, the result would simply be winter holiday parties instead of christmas parties at public schools and no nativity scenes on town land. Hardly the end of Christmas.
Just to clarify the “war” part of the term: Is intent critical to the definition, i.e. those responsible for any event intend the demise of public Christmas celebrations?
Put another way: The internet and it’s offering easy/instant e-mail has (for the sake of argument) caused a decline in the use of the regular postal service. Were the creators of the internet engaged in a war on snail mail? Or, more accurately, was the decline of snail mail an innocent casualty to something else going on?
Our global village is getting smaller and smaller. Communities are less likely to be composed of just one culture. This trend is having an effect on what once were assumed aspects of our public activities. At one time it was unspoken fact: everyone celebrates Christmas around here - unspoken because no one needed say so. This, of course, is no longer true.
Once can be threatened, of course, without the threat being intentionally delivered. To those who feel the threat, I guess it’s indistinguishable whether or not there is intent. But, even if it feels like an attack doesn’t mean it was supposed to be an attack.
It is highly incredible that a pissed off anti-Christmas group is forming sleeper cells with a view to undermining and eventually eradicating the public celebration of Christmas. More credible is that aspect of public life is going the way of the appendix - a perhaps once vital organ now relegated to vestigal status by the relentless march of social evolution.
In each these instances, the intent is to remove that particular celebration. I imagine that not every actor has the intent to remove Christmas as a whole. Indeed, in some cases, the actors are not hostile to Christmas at all, and are just acting to comply with what they believe in the most prudent course: say, for example, a school principle who imposes a no-red-and-green decorations policy for the “winter party” because he believes that this is necessary or prudent to avoid a future lawsuit. In fact, no law or Supreme Court decision requires that sort of restriction… but it’s a result of the climate, and falls into the general scope I’m discussing. If there’s a better phrase than “War on Christmas,” I’m amenable to using it.
Except that I believe I can point to individual cases in which the changes wrought in response to this perceived “attack” have been of importance, and relevance.
Can a school choir give a winter concert and sing “Silent Night” without offending the Constitution? They can. But in response to threatened lawsuits, I can document cases in which schools have removed “Silent Night” from the list of songs sung at winter concerts – simply because they wished to avoid the expense of litigation.
That, to me, justifies the word “war” - a threatened attack, and the strategic and tactical response to avoid the cost of even winning lititgation by complying with the demands made.
This thread is intended to explore whether or not it’s fair to say there exists such a series of attacks. It seems to me that if you agree these attacks exist, but believe they are right and proper, that’s another debate.
It might be interesting to go ahead and use some examples. Part of the problem with this issue is that there are figures who have a vested interest in distorting innocuous events into attacks on Christmas.
I think “War on Government-Sponsored Religious Celebrations” would be a more accurate description, and “Movement Against Government-Sponsored Religious Celebrations” is even better.
You’re free, of course, to narrow your definition as much as you which, but it won’t change that some people won’t agree with it.
When I think of things like “The War on Drugs” or “The War on Terror” of “The War on Poverty” I think of an all-out effort to stamp out something. Granted, the War on Drugs is understood to mean illegal drugs, not just drugs. But I still think it suggests a pretty broad effort, meant to eradicate them wherever they are being used.
If someone said “War on Christmas” that would suggest to me that there was an effort to stop it from being celebrated anywhere. Raids on churches, fines for having a Christmas tree in your home, etc. Which would be a far different situation than what we see, which is (IMO) activists using the convenient pervasiveness of Christmas to find where church/state lines are (in their opinion) too blurred.
Therefore, I think the phrasing is a little too melodramatic. Even if someone wanted to say “Well, when I use that term, what I really mean is a war on PUBLIC Christmas” I’d still feel like the terminology is wrong.
How about “More in the continuing development of the celebration of the winter solstace”? Or “Evolution of Christmas” for short? As we all know the current traditions predate Christianity. Even after Christians planted its flag into the winter celebration, traditions from other sources immigrated beneath.
While Dickens and Rockwell may have frozen our current imagery of a traditional Christmas, the flux keeps on fluxing. No one says “wassail” any more. “Merry Christmas” may well be on the way out too. I wonder what store front window decorations will look like 200 years from now?
One cannot discuss the so-called “War on Christmas” without considering the political origins of the idea. For example, John Gibson’s book on the topic–which can fairly be described as the touchstone for those who believe there is a “War on Christmas”–is subtitled “How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.” If the author presupposes this “War on Christmas” is a “liberal plot”, I don’t see how anyone can take this work as a dispassionate, critical discussion; it is clearly being used as a political tool to harm a certain political segment.
But laying that bias aside, is there any validity to the notion that those who celebrate Christmas are being unfairly persecuted? First, I think we must rule out legal challenges to the celebration of Christmas; succesful or not, these are presumably decided under a fair legal system (if the debate is whether or not the US judicial system is fair, that’s a separate question, except I note that approx 85% of Americans celebrate Christmas–more like 100% among elected officials–and most examples of judicial bias are in favor of the powerful/majority).
That leaves social attacks on the December holiday. One should first note that some claims of this type made by Gibson and his mouthpiece O’Reilly have proven false: For example, O’Reilly cited an elementary school in Wisconsin putting on a play in which the lyrics to “Silent Night” were altered to be more “politically correct” (he made this claim during his 1/3 appearance on Letterman). That claim is false, and had been shown to be false about a month earlier. The fact that many of Bill O’Reilly’s and John Gibson’s claims fall apart under scrutiny makes the notion of a calculated attack on Christmas dubious.
The deciding factor for me is, quite frankly, the forum in which these maybe-true-maybe-false claims are repeatedly asserted: O’Reilly’s program is a personality-driven shoutfest, and the man himself is a self-aggrandizing blowhard. That makes for entertaining TV, I’m sure, but I hardly think it’s a place to expect thoughtful, well-argued positions of the issues of the day. Bottom Line: The “War on Christmas” is an invention strictly to gin-up a conflict that can play out as content on various cable-news outlets (Congress is not in session for most of December, making it a dry month for political commentary). That explanation for the presence of any “War on Christmas” is more satisfying that the ridiculous belief that anyone anywhere is worried over whether a person says “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”.
What specifically are these “series of events”? Your argument so far consists only of a vague reference to this war on Christmas. Nothing that can be refuted, becauser there aren’t any specifics.
BTW, I’m not saying I disagree with you. I’m just saying you haven’t made a case for your thesis.
