Kimstu: You’re just marking time in this thread 'til Bricker shows up again, aren’t you? 
Or:
Scene:Wal-Mart (or any other large retailer)
Marketing Director: I think we’re contributing too much to the commercialization of Christmas.
Underling: But boss, 99% of our customers celebrate Christmas.
MD: Yeah, but they’re going to buy stuff here anyways. Let’s tone down the Christmas angle and let our customers get back to the true meaning of Christmas.
Underling: Won’t we lose sales?
MD: Nah. Just switch to “holiday”…maybe we’ll even please some folks.
Scene: School Board
SB President: I’m worried about religious extremism.
SB Member: Huh?
SB President: Look at that wackos in Plano trying to force Christmas colors on everyone. We don’t need that aggravation.
SB Member: Good point, boss. What should we teach the children?
SB President: Hmmm…How about basic language, science and math skills in a non-religious framework.
My point is that maybe some organizations do things based on their own beliefs and not out of fear or pressure.
No, Bricker eventually answered my question, so I’m leaving him to the other posters here from now on.
I do enjoy saying “sporc”, though. (sporc sporc sporc sporc!) And, to be a little more serious, I do think it’s worthwhile to have a handy catchphrase for what we’re talking about that’s more accurate than the ridiculous (and now universally rejected in this thread) term “War on Christmas”.
Oh my goodness. What color is the sky on your planet?
All right then, jsc: what about countervailing fears and pressures?
Certainly. When Wal-Mart is creating the signage for their post-thanksgiving sales, and deciding whether to use the word “holiday” or “Christmas”, the thoughts running through their little pea brains are:
- Fear of offending Christmas fans.
- Fear of offending potential shoppers who are non-Christmas fans.
- Which way will lead to larger sales?
.
.
.
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999: Which way aligns with personal beliefs, ethics and concern for the good of the culture as a whole?
Well, I have nothing against magnetized sporks, but I feel compelled to point out that if you were to co-opt the ankh as your movement’s emblem, you could sell list them in your website mechandizing as “Ankh-Magsporc”
Where’s that “slap-other-poster-smilie?”
Well certainly the dialogue is contrived but what about the main point? Why is it easier to believe that the actions of an organization are the result of fear or pressure rather than a true expression of their values?
It wasn’t the dialog that I marvelled at; it was the main point. Perhaps I’m overly cynical, but I believe that any organization whose main goal is the bottom line, is driven by the need to maximize profits and shareholder value. All other considerations are secondary. So if their values* (if a corporation can be said to have values) fall in line with their primary goal, that’s a bonus; if not, then those values can be jettisoned.
So in the case of a major retailing chain, all decisions concerning “what do we call Christmas” are driven by its impact on sales.
*And whose values come into play, anyway, in an organization with thousands of employees, hundreds of executives and hundreds of thousands of shareholders?
Organizations, large and small, are not run by insensitive alien others. They are run by people not unlike you or me. They live in homes and have friends and relatives. They think, believe and feel like anyone else. They don’t leave their humanity in a locker when they go to work. Mega-retailer or local school district, organizations are run by people with values. We may not like their values but they’re there.
An extension of my point is that maybe what the OP is observing is not the result external forces lined up against Christmas. It is quite possible we are seeing a shift in values - forces internal to people and therefore internal to organizations. Such a change can be threatening. I’m suggesting that the war on Christmas is a fiction that some people tell themselves rather than believe their values are not as widely held as they would like.
I agree with virtually all of what you say, PCapeman. I know that corporate executives are human and hold widely-held human values. But their business decisions are driven my many factors, the most important of which is impact on sales and sharevalue. This is how they earn a living, by keeping an eye onthe bottom line. Those personal values are secondary at best.
I’m certain that most of those executives who decide to put “Holiday Sale” on their signage go home and wish their friends and families “Merry Christmas”.
I also agree that the so-called war on Christmas is really just an extension of this. Executives note the shift in demographics, and decide that they may need to address this change in order to keep up or increase sales. The perceived change is driven by capitalism, and not by any substantial change in culture (other than the demographic change). It’s capitalism at work, and not a sudden onslaught of liberal secular humanism.
True, jsc1953, we are not all that far apart on this and I do appreciate your perspective. Also, I owe you an apology. I did not mean to mock your point with that dialogue and I see how it might be taken it that way. I wanted to point out that not everyone is reactionary - some people act on their own values. And, it may help to replace values where it appears in my posts with priorities. That way it is distinct from the thorny definitions of ethics or morals.
I imagine it is quite likely that the executives who put “Holiday Sale” on their signage do go home and wish their friends and families “Merry Christmas” (if they are Christmas observers, of course). But the two are different situations. Such a person might also say “Happy Holidays” to a stranger. It could be that person’s priority to embrace a wider world - not because he fears offending anyone, but because he holds diversity to be important. A cynical person might say such an executive has merely given in to political correctness. I say such an executive is expressing his values - values that disturb some.
No doubt there are spineless mega-retailers, local schools districts, and what-have-you out there that react out of political correctness. And yes, the color of the sky in my world may be a bit peculiar, but I prefer not paint so many with such a broad brush.
Bricker - you say this
and then say (several times ;)) that motivation is key - it’s OK if an organization has/changes policies so that Christmas isn’t explicitly celebrated by the organization, as long as those policies were set because of internal decisions and not due to external pressure (e.g., litigation, boycotts, or threats thereof).
Here’s my question: how do you tell the difference, when you are not a part of the organization/process? And what do you do about all the other people on “your side” of the argument who don’t make that differentiation?
An anecdotal example from my personal experience: My town has a parade every December. It is not organized or supported by the city, or even the Chamber of Commerce, but rather by an extremely loose coalition of various businesses, organizations, and individuals. There’s an all-volunteer board and committee, who set a theme every year, make pertinent decisions (like the decision to ban candy THROWING due to a number of nearly-crushed munchkins over the last several years; this year, parade participants had to HAND candy to the kids), etc. The parade itself consists of pretty much anyone who wants to sign up - you can have a float, or carry a banner, or drive a car, or ride your bicycle, or walk your dog, or whatever (family-appropriate). You don’t even have to follow the theme. Not following the theme may count against you in the float-judging, but I wouldn’t even guarantee that. As far as I remember, the theme has rarely, if ever, been explicitly Christmas-oriented, and certainly not Christmas in the religious sense. It’s usually some cutesy topic that will allow fun, creative floats. (The parades are actually pretty fun, either to watch or to participate, and there’s a great turnout for both. There’s always the high-school marching bands, a few horses, at least one Santa, some great floats, cool antique cars, the local animal-rescue dogs, and lots of people giving away candy. Merchants on the route often hand out hot cocoa or cider or something to nearby spectators. I don’t know how many people there are, but it takes a couple hours to watch it go by, and longer than that to traverse the entire route.)
Now, last year, one of the committee members suggested, more or less, that since we’re a college town of ever-increasing size, and seeing as how the diversity of the town has increased mightily since the end of Jim Crow and sundown laws, and since there are, you know, other religions, and since we’re trying to encourage community involvement, that it might just be polite to acknowledge those facts by ceasing to nominally exclude non-Christians by having a Christmas Parade. Not that it really did exclude anyone, you understand, just that it would be a nice thing to do to have a Holiday Parade instead, so that it was clear that it wasn’t a religious event and that EVERYONE was welcome to participate. All the members of the board and committee, including many devout Southern Baptists who would never, ever, have come up with this on their own, thought about it and agreed that it would be a nice, polite, friendly thing to do. (Admittedly, the volunteers often tend to come from the arts community, so some do lean left. For Okies, that is.) So anyway, they changed the name from Christmas Parade to Holiday Parade.
Exactly what you’re talking about, right? A change from within, based solely on the values and decisions of the organization, with absolutely no pressure from the outside. No problem. Yeah, right.
Holy moly, from the reaction of many citizens, you would have thought they changed it to “The AntiChrist Parade” and had Satanists actively recruiting enroute. “War on Christmas” was one of the nicer things said. Of course, the specter of some vast, liberal, leftwing conspiracy to destroy America and Family (as well as Christmas) was trotted out regularly. Christians (not all of them, obviously) threw screaming, hissing, foaming fits about THEIR holiday and THEIR parade and THEIR town being ruined. Even after the board and committee apologized for upsetting people, and explained the reasoning for the change, these people continued to do their best O’Reilly/Limbaugh/Hannity imitations and insist that the name COULD NOT BE CHANGED because it was WRONG WRONG WRONG to DESTROY Christmas, and anyone that didn’t celebrate Christmas should just suck it up. (Because, you know, if you’re not Christian, you just don’t count – I do live in the buckle on the Bible Belt. Actually, 'round here, there’s a fair number of folks that wouldn’t count YOU as Christian, Bricker, if my memory that you’re Catholic is correct .)
So in my experience, there IS no difference due to motivation. It doesn’t matter why someone or some group chooses to use a less exclusive phrase - it’s all part of the evil, pervasive, ever-increasing attack on Christmas, that everyone would see if they would just remove their biased blinders, just like your book says.
So, do you have any examples at all where private entities made changes to their policies, to exclude Christmas in whatever manner, due to the litigation/threats that you keep mentioning? Or is it just obvious that it must be happening that way, because, you know, there’s no other possible reason that anyone would ever make such changes except to attack Christmas?
Ok, so let’s recap.
There is no overt, explicit movement to remove “Christmas” from either the public sphere or public view. No ACLU pages saying it is their intent to challenge retailers who say “Merry Christmas” to people, right?
All the individual instances thus far identified have sprung from motives which do not remotely resemble antipathy towards Christians or Christmas in general. Many are trying to be MORE respectful of religious views. Others seem to be outright misunderstandings.
Another type of “attack on Christmas” is described as corporate policy decisions favoring a secular slogan over a Christian one for some undefined reason. As of yet no instance of a policy change without a benign motivation has been introduced into the body of evidence. As such it is, at the moment, discounted.
A handful are citizens who are claiming the state-sponsored events/displays violate the establishment clause. The courts will settle these.
So what the OP seems to be contending is that the net effect of all these benign, or even noble intentioned, and unrelated in cause changes, is problematic for some reason. He cites “tradition” as being something which should be preserved without giving a reason why this tradition should not change or deliniating any harm which would occur from said change.
Enjoy,
Steven
Even the Grinch learned his lesson.
From Surgical Strike Against Christmas, starring Bill O’reilly as Little Cindy-Lou Who.
I am in New Hampshire for the next three days. I’ll be on the boards in limited fashion, but not able to do detailed posts or cites.
See you on Saturday.
Hell, half the people accused of hating Christmas and Christianity are CHRISTIANS THEMSELVES. That’s why, as I pointed out, this is a war of a particular ideology of Christian-facist who have turned their religion into a pissing contest.
A city councilman recently questioned whether it was right to fund the Salvation Army with government dollars when it seems to use those dollars directly to promote religious ideas rather than providing the contracted charity. The local Salvation Army guy, in response, says that he quetions the morality of having a city councilman who so obviously hates Christianity so much. Of, the city councilman is a Christian: that goes without saying. But anyone who stands in the way of government is of course an untouchable.
And the Salvation Army guy? The moralizing, know-who-is-a-Christian-and-whos-not? Caught sending porno shots to what he thought was an underage boy… but was really a cop. I mean, that sequence seems almost like a science.
The truly disgusting thing is that it wasn’t too long ago that the Christianists were loudly decrying Godless Constitution and the idiosyncratic founders. Time and time again they tried to pass an amendment to remove religious tests and officially consecrate the Constitution to God. The best they could get was “booby-prizes” like “In God We Trust” on the money and “Under God” in the pledge. Legislatively, they otherwise failed time and time again.
Now, suddenly, they are turning around and declaring that the Constitution is a devinely Christian document and that secularists have somehow taken the true Constitutions meaning away by judicial power, eschewing the legislatures. Irony, thy name is Dobson/Barton/laundry list of people who are turning Christianity into nothing more special than a dog pissing to mark its territory.
It wouldn’t take long to address *any * of the many objections/rebuttals/questions raised to you here. If you’re hoping we’ll all just forget about it in 3 days so you won’t have to :dubious:, then good luck.
Preemptively needling Bricker seems a bit low. I see no reason not to assume he will be a man of his word. (Albeit a man of his word who is totally divorced from reality and common sense when it comes to the issue at hand )