“Christian Right” is simply a broader term which includes the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, and all their ilk.
OK, so I’ve followed this thread and here’s what I’ve gathered from it. The so-called “attack on Christmas” is rooted, in part, in a group of Christians not being permitted to turn a school Christmas party in Texas into an attempt to proselytize. Is that right?
I’ve come across the Legend of the Candy Cane. My take on it is it’s an attempt to attach religious glurge to a secular object. I also wonder how many kids in Plano, Texas, haven’t at least heard of this Jesus Christ fellow.
Something that’s brought up fairly often when people claim there’s a War on Christianity in this country is a case in which school prayer was banned at football games, also in Texas. What I learned reading this board is that the people who brought the suit weren’t Atheists or even the dreaded Secular Humanists (I have actually met someone who said he was one); instead they were Episcopalians and Catholics, who are, of course, notoriously anti-Christian. :rolleyes:
I’m a devout, liberal Episcopalian. I’ll go to two church services tonight and sing at the choir in both of them. I’ve taught Sunday School, read lessons, and even given wine to people at Communion, although some of the same people who are saying there’s a War on Christianity would object to the use of real wine. I’ve wished people a “Merry Christmas” and a “Happy Christmas,” as well as the odd “Happy Holidays” and I haven’t heard one objection. Unlike some churches I’ve been reading about, my church will also be holding services on Christmas Day; they wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise. Neither would the church I grew up in.
Here’s what bugs me about this whole War on Christianity nonsense. Because I’m not a born-again Evangelical, because I don’t say “Jesus” every other word, because I support homosexuality and evolution, I’ve been told I’m not a Christian by these people’s standards. In the recent case involving teaching evolution in Dover, PA, people who supported evolution were called “Atheists”. When someone has done so to me, usually in GD, I don’t take it as an insult, just an inaccuracy, and I tell them why they’re wrong. My beliefs may differ from conservative Christians, but they are just as sincerely based in my faith and in my reading of the Bible. Trying to force me into their mold is not going to work.
I have quite a few friends who are not Christians. One of my closest ones is one I’ve brought up many times around here, a Fundamentalist-turned-Atheist-turned Wiccan. We thoroughly enjoy discussing religion, and I know why he’s not a Christian or likely to return to the faith. Some folks would condemn me for continuing to associate with him or not drag him kicking and screaming back to the fold. Too bad. I’m not going to do it. You see, there’s something else I’ve learned hanging around this board. There are people out there who have very good reasons for not being Christian; some of those reasons are rooted in the very behaviour of Christians.
War on Christianity? I haven’t seen it. War on Obnoxious Christians? While I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a war, I have seen objections and even made them myself. I’ve had the dubious pleasure of actually being oppressed and abused for doing the right thing, back when I was a kid who insisted on standing up for her best friend who had handicaps. I was, in my angsty teenage way, that I was being “persecuted for righteousness sake” (actually, I still think there’s truth in that); it’s not the same as being wished “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. I don’t need the world, the morning news, or the ads in today’s paper to tell me the meaning of Christmas. It’s been written on my heart since I was a little girl and the wonder and joy of that meaning will be renewed in beautiful music at a wonderful church this evening. The joy and love in a friend’s voice when she wishes me a “Joyous Yule” is as real as the joy and love in mine when I wish Christian friends a “Merry Christmas”.
Surely joy and love is what this season is supposed to be all about, especially for Christians? 
Didn’t St. Paul say something about being “in the world but not of it?” Am I less of a Christian because I interupted this post to give a card to my newspaper carrier which reads “Seasons Greetings” not “Merry Christmas”, even though I wished him a “Merry Christmas” when I did it? (No, of course he didn’t take offense! He appears to be a sensible human being.) What the world does or does not do to celebrate this time of year is not supposed to affect my faith, and it seldom does.
This, to me, is a tempest in a teapot and the people making a fuss about it seem to be wasting far too much time on something trivial, as am I. Thank you for putting up with this long post. Since the paper’s here, I think I’ll use a teapot for the purpose for which it was intended – tea, not tempests! :rolleyes:
Come to think of it, technically, in the Christian calendar, Christmas doesn’t even start until midnight, although I don’t know which denominations acknowledge Advent.
At any rate, Happy Advent, all of you, and for those of you who don’t acknowledge it, may your holidays and the coming year be filled with joy, love, and light. Starving Artist, this includes you.
[
CJ
The thing is, Seige, the antagonistic response to this perceived ‘war on Christmas’ is defensive in nature, not offensive. If it weren’t so inportant to those who are driving the movement to suppress the use of the word ‘Christmas’ (and during Christmas time itself, no less) it wouldn’t be so important to those of us who are resentful of the effort and are therefore fighting against it.
This resentment exists on several levels:
a) We resent being told what we can and cannot say.
b) We resent the effort on the part of the left to suppress and minimize Christianity among the populace as a whole - which is clearly the impetus behind this concerted effort to make Christmas as invisible to public view as possible.
c) We resent the hypocracy and dishonesty inmvolved in the left’s claiming there is no ‘war on Christnmas’ - a war which they clearly started - followed by the claim that Christians must be really insecure in their convictions in order to get so worked up over the issue - when clearly the left is worked up enough over it to have managed to get most of the retailers in the country to start using terminology such as ‘Holiday Gift Sale’ and running idiotic ads advertising their ‘Holliday Trees’. (A move sure to backfire, btw, as I and many others are not about to patronize a store hoping to sell us items to be used as Christmas gifts while at the same time denying, in effect, Christmas itself.)
d) We resent the sheer idiocy of such an attempt itself. To those of us on the right this appears to be yet another example of the left turning a blind eye to perfectly obvious reality in order to try to affect some social change they favor, and then using that phony viewpoint as a weapon with which to browbeat people into adopting this change…similar to the accusations of sexism I received once during the height of the women’s movement when I dared make the obvservation that perhaps women wouldn’t make good firefighters because they wouldn’t be strong enough to carry someone down a ladder. Nope, I was a ‘sexist pig’ for daring to claim such a perfectly obvious difference exists between women and men (and this despite the fact that I’m as much in favor of equal rights for women as anyone). No, you had to pretend that no difference outside the obvvious biological ones existed between the sexes or you were attacked as being a misogynist and a bigot. That was utterly ridiculous, and so is this attempt to take the word ‘Christmas’ out of the Christmas holiday.
Now having said that, let me thank you for your gracious holiday wish. I don’t know quite why you singled me out for such approbation, given that my participation in this thread up to now has been mostly in regard to Larry Mudd’s comment and not the war on Christmas, but I appreciate it just the same. Now, without trying to be flip and/or antagonistic toward anyone, but merely in keeping with my usual practice this time of year and the knowledge that you are a Christian, let me wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Kinda funny really. I resent the exact same thing. Not such a big fan of being told that I can’t say happy holidays and that I have to say merry christmas. Of course, neither one has the same ring as “Have a jolly Jesus-day.”
Um…how exactly is that working? Who is trying to suppress the Christians, and how are they doing it. Bear in mind. I will subtract points for saying “the left” or “the liberals” in your answer to the first part of the question.
So it’s the lefts fault that retailers are doing whatever they can to sell whatever they have for whatever holiday people are celebrating. You see conspiracy. I see capitalism at work.
Now you’re being silly. 
Why are you even dragging that into this thread?
How is the attempt to get “Happy Holidays” removed any different from the supposed blockage of “Merry Christmas.” Hell, why do we even care? With everything that’s going on, people have time to get bugs up their butts about this?
Dude. Would ya quit being so flip and antagonistic? Then again, I’m easily antagonized by flips. Can’t even watch an acrobat without getting cheesed off. Gymnasts just infuriate me. I even get mildly annoyed when somebody flips a coin.
Let me put a different perspective on it. Let’s say, hypothetically, some people *really * do say “Happy Holidays”, so as to diminish "the true meaning of the season. They also wish that all Christians would stop greeting other Christians with “Merry Christmas”
However, there are going to be jews out there who great each other, and Christians with the phrase "Happy Holidays.” Also, Christians who are referring to both New Years and Christmas.
Now, it seems to me that you, SA, can not automatically assume all those damn "Happy Holidays-stating liberals hate Christmas, so long as the second group exists.
Thanks, SA. (And I was going out of my way to be a dick, and everything.)
It may seem that way to you, but it’s really not.
Christians aren’t being told they can’t celebrate Christmas or can’t say “Merry Christmas” in public. They are saying that everyone must celebrate Christmas (or nothing at all) and must say “Merry Christmas” (or nothing at all.)
This effectively says, “Accept the Lord Jesus as your personal saviour or shut up. No holiday joy for you.” You hear a lot of rhetoric like “What are we celebrating if we’re not celebrating the birth of Jesus?” and “Jesus is the reason for the season!” For many, many people, the season has very little to do with Christ, and never has. It feels a need. We gather in warm places and eat, drink and be merry. Before the Christian church put their mark on it, we called it “yule.” This is where we get the word, “Jolly.” There’s not much to it, besides having a good time during a bleak time of year.
You keep talking about “the left” trying to stamp out Christianity, and point to holiday greetings that don’t specifically mention Christ as evidence of this. The left was hard at work back in Victorian times, when people regularly expressed “yuletide wishes” or “season’s greetings,” I guess.
Believe it or not, a surprising number of people who aren’t Christian buy what you and I call “Christmas trees,” whether they be apostates or adherents of other religions to whom the idea of putting gifts under a pretty tree appeals. So what if a retailer tries to encourage more of this by calling the things “holiday trees?” It sounds a bit foreign to me, too – but a Christmas tree has precious little to do with Jesus anyway. Yes, Jesus’s birth has been yoked to traditional winter festivals for a long time, but how mean-spirited is it to say, “That’s entirely ours now!”
For most people, this time of year is just about good cheer, peace on earth, and good will towards all men. (Meaning humanity, not just those with willies.)
How messed up is it that some people are actively complaining about the voicing of good will towards all men part?
“I hope you enjoy the holiday!”
“Fuck you, you’re supposed to say, ‘I hope you enjoy the Christian holiday, and know that Jesus is Lord!’”
By which, I mean, of course – a small subset of vociferous people who are nominally Christian.
Nice strawnmanm there, Wolfster. The complaint isn’t about you saying ‘Happy Holidays’; it’s about those who want to suppress ‘Merry Christmas’ and remove Christ and Christmas from public view. (Funny, I always thought the left disapproved of censorship. 
)
Subtract away, chum, but notice I didn’t ask Larry Mudd for individual identities and the daily activities of those in the ‘Christian Right.’ This in no way means that the left (or ‘liberals’ if you prefer) aren’t doing their thing and that the Christian Right isn’t doing its thing.
I see both cowardice and the desire to have their cake and eat it too at work. We both know perfectly well that the greatest shopping season of the year for retailers is not the result of non-Christmas holidays.
It certainmly is silly, and that’s exactly why I’m dragging it into this thread. It’s silly to pretend no sex differences exist and it’s silly to pretend the word ‘Christmas’ doesn’t belong in December holiday greetings.
I’nm nmot aware of anmy attenmpt to repress the use of ‘Happy Holidays’ other than for the attenmpt to use it to suppress ‘Merry Christmas’. I’ve used it countless times myself over the years. It wasn’t until this ridiculous attenmpt to replace ‘Merry Christnmas’ with it that the its use became an object of resentment.
Please see the post you’re quoting from for a detailed explanation.
Then check out Cirque du Soleil. I would defy you to make such a comment once you’ve done so. 
Starving Artist, can you provide any kind of evidence whatsoever that there is any concerted effort by ANYONE to “suppress Christmas”? Do you have any evidence? Or are you just spouting the talking points of the idiots on the Right who have manufactured this whole to-do in order to make up a strawman they can rah-rah the faithful over? Which, I’d like to add, is not like you.
I’d also like to note that what I’ve seen have been right-wing Christians and offenderati getting all up in arms about people saying “Happy Holidays”. I have yet to see ANYONE (except for rare and stupid individuals who are just as much offenderati as the right-wingers) on the left or in the middle yell at people for saying “Merry Christmas”.
Dear god man. Did you ask Santa for a new keyboard for the holidays? Please tell me that you did, and that you’ve been a good boy.
I’m not seeing how this is a straw man. The nutjobs involved are trying to prevent people from saying happy holidays because it takes christ out of christmas, which really would just leave “mas” and I haven’t heard anybody saying “Happy Mas.”
I’m not taking this as a “left/right” thing. I’m taking it as a “people with too much free time/people with better things to do” thing. As I am not Larry Mudd (at least not according to my drivers license), I don’t care what he says. Well, I do, but it’s not important in this instance.
Yeah. That’s what it is. This surprises you? Nobody is trying to take christ out of christmas. They’re just trying to make a buck.
Isn’t it just as silly to get bent out of shape over happy holidays? How is getting all worked up over one thing different from getting worked up over another?
How do you differentiate? Ask everyone who says it why they said it?
Yeah. I saw the post. I’m just not buying the explanation. As I said, getting worked up over one thing is the same as getting worked up over another.
A circus wifout ephelants? No clowns coming out of tiny car? That’s just cwazy.
I’m sorry, but I have to ask: what alternative universe do you inhabit?
There is no effort to suppress and minimize Christianity. It does not exist.
Rather, there is an effort by a number of persons, including a number of us Christians, to get the government to stop using public funds to push (politically right-leaning) Christianity down the throats of every person who lives in this country.
The “war on Christmas” was invented by Jerry Falwell (who, at least, is honestly driven by his theocratic aspirations) and Bill O’Reilly (who is driven by a desire for ratings) and a few other people who generally lie in their claims:
George Soros is NOT funding a drive to eliminate Christmas;
Stores and TV stations began substituting “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings” to replace “Merry Christmas” over 30 years ago, because they wanted to include people who were not Christian in their PR and advertising promotions;*
No terrible secular humanist, atheist, Jew, or even Catholic has ever tried to destroy the celebration of Christmas by any group that was not using government funds.
You are swallowing lies and getting angry because you believe the lies of Dobson and Robertson and Gibson and O’Reilly and Falwell. Since the manifestations of the “war on Christmas” actually began even before Jerry formed his “Moral Majority,” why did it take him almost 40 years (until his supporters began to fade away and he needed a new crusade) for him to recognize what was really happening (aliong with all those “secular Jews” that were funding it)?
I mentioned this in another thread, but look at the portrayal of Christmas in the popular media: books, then movies. What are the big cash makers? Miracle on 34th Street? No Jesus. It’s a Wonderful Life? An incompetent angel and “Joseph” and not one refereence to Jesus. The various Grinch portrayals? No Jesus. The thousands of Santa and Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman cartoons? No Jesus. Heck, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (162 years ago) or O’Henry’s A Gift of the Magi (99 years ago): no Jesus. Off hand, I can think of only the Charlie Brown Christmas (with a ten-second recital by Linus) and Amahl and the Night Visitors that have been successful while having anything connection to the Nativity. Popular media feeds what will make it money; if the American public had begun demanding (Oh, 50 or 100 years ago) religious stories, we would have them. It was not “effort” by the left that dropped Jesus out of the end of year celebrations, it was the overwhelming majority of Christians who really don’t care all that much.
- I was in retail management, and dealing with TV advertising, when most of those changes happened. NOT ONCE did any single person, most of them Christian, ever mention the need to get religion out of the holidays. The whole thrust was from within the advertising community to include as many people as possible. No outside “left wing” (how many lefties actually go into advertising?) pressure. No intent to destroy religion. Just the typical American desire to sell, sell, sell.
If you want to read a transcript of a program with Josh Gibson and Pat Robertson fellating each other with examples of how the poor, poor Christian Right is being picked on, http://groups.google.com/group/Christlike/browse_thread/thread/586b4353422726a5/16406a9e2cffef69?lnk=st&q=red+green+illegal+christmas&rnum=4#16406a9e2cffef69
Ahhh, the Persecution Myth. Nope I don’t buy it.
Nobody is telling you you can’t say anything you please. Merry Christmas, Happy holidays (just like it said right on the Fox website, just like it says on the White House greeting cards). Nobody cares.
Persecution again. Uh huh
No, the war was originally started by John Birchers, and was later resurrected by Bill O’Reilly.
There is/was no such attempt. It is pure fantasy.
Now on the other hand, let’s talk about some real world activity. A shopping mall right here in librul land California was on the news. Want to know why? Not because they had Christmas displays, not because they had been told to take them down, Nothing like that. They had their Christmas displays up, but had decided to NOT allow a Menorah to be displayed, despite the fact that they had allowed it in prior years. So who was being “persecuted”? Surely not the christians. They changed their “new policy” after it hit the news. Now, both the Christmas and Chanukah displays are allowed. This was just one anecdotal ocurrence. Still if we want to hoop and holler about being picked on, maybe we should stop doing it to someone else?
Meanwhile, I already provided the cites to show that O’Reilly’s red and green story was falsified twice. He tried it on one town and was called on it. What did he do? He simply changed the name of the town and recycled it. Then he got called on it again.
Well, it’s late, nmy nmonmitor has bveenm onm for awhile anmd is likely to conmk anmy nmonmenmt, bvut I will try to nmake a couple of conmnmenmts inm regard to sonme of the posts nmade sinmce I was here last.
(As you canm see, Harbvorwolf, nmy nmew keybvoard is yet to nmaterialize. I thought you nmight appreciate nmy posts nmore knmowinmg how nmuch editinmg I habve to do to nmake thenm legibvle.)
But be that as it may, I should probably clear up some misperceptions some of you appear to have regarding the way I come to form my opinions. I never watch Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or John Gibson. I rarely watch Bill O’Reilly and virtually never watch his program all the way through, although I have to say I’m usually in agreement with him when I do happen upon his program, but there have been more than a few times when I’ve found myself disagreeing with him quite heartily. I regard myself prinmarily as a Christian although I’m really pretty much religion-free and don’t hold with almost all the rituals and beliefs common to organized religion. I haven’t attended any church services other than for funerals in decades. I believe in God, but I don’t really think anyone on the face of this planet has even a remotely accurate idea as to his true nature and what is really going on in regard to creation and this phenomenon we know as life.
My opinions are based prinmarily on what I see as I go about my business day to day. Most of my opinions about liberals, liberalism and the left come about as a result of my observations of them over the years since I first became politically aware in the late sixties. I will say I cheer somewhat when I happen upon Bill O’Reilly or someone else who is railing about some issue I have recognized and am ticked off about, but I don’t look to them in order to learn about what is going on in this country and/or what I should think about it.
I feel relatively certain that my observations are correct most of the time; however in this case - as in others from time to time - I’m willing to admit I may be in error in regard to some position I’ve taken, and frankly tomndebb’s post regarding the influence of the advertising business in all this makes a certain amount of sense. I’ve wondered just how it is that this ‘Holiday Tree’ phenomenon has managed to become so pervasive in so short a time. I found it difficult to believe that even the dreaded left would have been able to accomplish it in so short a time.
So I’m willing to admit I may have been wrong in my assessment of the genesis of this movement.
Having said that however, I do think this advertiser’s tactic has been readily picked up by the left and adopted as another arrow in its quiver in the left’s effort to secularize the country…a secularization born of both the fact that Christians often oppose much of what the left champions (some of which is good…gay rights, for example); combined with the same type of superior, high-minded scorn for the ‘superstition’ involved in having a belief in God that one sees on these boards all the time.
I apologize for the disjointedness evident in my previous post. I was racing the clock in trying to get it online before my computer conks again, and thus didn’t take the time that I should have to polish it. To paraphrase Pascal, ‘I apologize for the length of my post; I hadn’t time to make it shorter’.
Er, I hate to break it to you, but winter solstice first, Christmas second.
Are you not aware that the VAST, and I do mean VAST, majority of those on the left are Christian? We atheists are in the minority in just about any grouping I can think of, other than a grouping of atheists, and we probably couldn’t even get half of that group to agree on anything, as we’re not some organized cabal of power.
In the words of that great supporter of the troops, Bing Crosby, the Bush family, the Republican Party of Broward County and others, “Happy Holidays” to you.
Are people really so stupid that they don’t realize that Holiday is short for “Holy Days”? That’s a heck of a lot less secular than, say, Santa Claus.
:rolleyes: What “effort to secularize the country”? Do you have any actual evidence—other than your constant and unpersuasive anecdotal claims about “things you’ve noticed ever since the sixties”—that “liberals” or “the left” in general is actually trying to do any such thing?
Most of the 20–35% of the American population that is generally characterized as “liberal”, like any other similarly-sized portion of the American population, self-identifies as Christian. These are not people who are trying to wipe God or Jesus out of “the country”.
In fact, the vast majority of liberal **non-**Christians also have no desire to “secularize the country”. At most, a tiny minority (like, 1–3% of the population) consisting of hard-core evangelical atheists (who are not necessarily political liberals, either) is interested in truly “secularizing” American culture.
What liberals in general do support is preserving the secular nature of American government. As in, we don’t want taxpayer money used to promote religious activity. (And many conservatives agree with us on this point, by the way.) And we personally tend to look favorably on religious inclusiveness and tolerance. However, we have not the least interest in “secularizing the country” or the culture in general by preventing Christians or others from celebrating Christmas in the private sector in whatever manner they prefer.
So there. Allow me to proffer to Starving Artist and his ilk a holiday greeting that will reassure them about the cultural security of Christmas while making it clear what we think of their idiotic “war on Christmas” rhetoric:
Merry Christmas, you credulous, whining, reactionary dumbfuck. And a happy New Year, too.