War on Christmas - revisited

Great Debates
241

What does “public recognition of Christmas as Christmas” mean?

Christmas in the places I have lived has always had a dual nature. On the one hand is the secular holiday (with the gifts, caroling, the secret santa’s, the Christmas parties at school) for which Christmas was a kind of a vague theme providing hints for decorations (some pagan, some quasi-Christian, some Christian - perhaps with an occasional Menorah thrown in for fun) and refreshments. On the other hand was the religious holiday, the end of the Advent, with Midnight Mass. In Sunday school (okay, CCD was never on sundays) it was always emphasized what Christmas was not about - and that was commercialization and getting gifts.

Insisting that secular Christmas be recognized as religious Christmas seems to me to be fighting decades of slippage and is as foolish as it is hopeless. Better to let the secular festivities become “holiday” festivities and allow the religious celebrations be as they were intended.

242

Given his constant ducking of every reply since starting this silly thing?

243

Bricker certainly seems to have time to start new debates; I wish he’d take a second or two and answer some of the simpler questions that I (and others) have posed herein.

244

Sorry for the hijack, but I had to comment on this. For several years now, I have had and displayed a Menorah as part of our holiday decorations (I am not Jewish, nor even Christian). I thought maybe I was the only one who did this. Certainly my wife thinks it’s some sort of seasonal insanity…

245

Sure.

But it’s much easier to start a new thread can comb through this one as I could woth more time. But as you did before, if you will list post #'s of unanswered questions, or summarize them in one post, I will be happy to take a run. The only thing I can;t do is provide detailed cites, since that requires research which is also a time issue.

246

It strikes me that “A Visit from St. Nicholas” neither mentions Jesus nor the reason for the season. I think tonight I’ll rewrite “Talking John Birch Society Blues” as “Talking War on Christmas Blues.”

Oh, Clement Moore?

Anyhow, maybe the culprits here are the pagans who are trying to take winter solstice back from the Christians who stole it from them 1500 years ago.

247

Bricker, were you planning to, and will you, comb through this thread of yours after returning from New Hampshire?

248

Yup.

249

Great; I can wait.

250

Good enough for me.

251

This is another aspect to the situation that I have mentioned during the earlier “War on Christmas” wars.

Looking at the public displays that are the most popular celebrations of Christmas in entertainment, repeated year after year, we find:

**+**Messiah (Oratorio), 1742: Not really a Christmas work, but now often performed at Christmas–Jesus mentioned frequently.
**-**A Visit from St. Nicholas, ca 1822: No mention of the Nativity or Jesus.
**-**A Christmas Carol, 1843, numerous movies and retellings; No mention of the Nativity or Jesus.
**?**The Gift of the Magi, 1906: One brief paragraph relating that the Magi brought gifts to “the Babe.”
**-**It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946: (Not fair, perhaps, since it only shows up at Christmas because it climaxes on Christmas Eve, but there is no mention of the Nativity or Jesus.)
**-**Miracle on 34th Street, 1947, 1959, 1973, 1994: No mention of the Nativity or Jesus.
**+**Amahl and the Night Visitors, 1951, 1963, 1978, 2002: Poor lame kid meets the three Magi on their way to Bethlehem.
**-**How the Grinch Stole Christmas, book, 1957, movies 1966, 2000: No mention of the Nativity or Jesus.
**+**A Charlie Brown Christmas , 1965: a brief Nativity reading from Luke by Linus, at the end.
**-**Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, 1964: No mention of the Nativity or Jesus.
**+*The Little Drummer Boy, 1968: Shepherd kid falls in with Magi.
**-*Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, 1970: No mention of the Nativity or Jesus.
**?*The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, 1971: John-Boy mentions the Nativity story in a show otherwise devoted to hoping Pa gets home for dinner.
-'Twas the Night Before Christmas, 1974: No mention of the Nativity or Jesus.
**-*The Year Without a Santa Claus, 1974: No mention of the Nativity or Jesus.
**-*The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus, 1985: No mention of the Nativity or Jesus.
*(Rankin and Bass have over a dozen “Christmas” titles that flood the TV every year, and not one of them mentions the Nativity.)

And here I draw the line on the grounds that anything created in the last 20 years (Santa Clause, I & II, etc.) just might be considered part of the “War on Christmas.”

So what do we find? Very few of our traditional (as in, repeated), celebrations of Christmas in the arts have anything to do with a religious theme. Now, Amahl and the Night Visitors was hamstrung by Menotti’s refusal to let it be reproduced for a couple of years and its operatic presentation does not make it a favorite among American audiences. However, where are all the other works celebrating the Nativity? If there was a demand for such works, they would be out there. There have actually been nearly a dozen movies/TV specials produced that portrayed some aspect of the nativity, but they do not get the ratings to be repeated each year–or not repeated in Prime Time. And it would be incorrect to claim that the networks will not play them on TV. At Easter, we “get” to see King of Kings, The Robe, Quo Vadis, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, The Sign of the Cross, The Big Fisherman, and other movies related (sometimes tenuously, but with more direct association than How the Grinch Stole Christmas), to the Passover, the Crucifixion, or to early Christianity.

In other words, it is not some recent bogus “War” that has kept Christ out of Christmas entertainment, but the tastes of the American public that do not give ratings to shows with a Nativity theme so that they are not replayed every year.

Before Bricker was born, I was treated to annual appeals to “put Christ back into Christmas.” (“The reason for the season” had, thankfully, not yet been coined.) Yet looking at the choices made by the American public that have come down to the current time, it seems pretty clear that it has been our choices, and not some unlikely cabal of anti-Christian leftists and right-wing merchants, that has downplayed the Nativity in our society.

252

My list of specific questions is in post #195

253

I suspect that “Bad Santa” might be considered a nuclear assault on Christmas.

But if we’re going back more than 20 years, A Christmas Story deserves to be on the list of traditional movies. I don’t recall Jesus getting anywhere near as much play as Flick and Grover Dill, and certainly nowhere near the attention that a certain BB rifle draws.

By the way, while this is not specifically Xmas-oriented, here’s a shocking tale of how one municipality brutally tried to discourage Jesus-worship.

It’s WAR I tells ya. :confused:

254

That motto seems appropriate for a fiat currency which is ultimately supported by faith.

255

Wait a second…

Christmas is “Christ Mass”; it’s defined as a church service. Those megachurches that closed their doors this past Dec 25th, they’re the ones who cancelled Christmas, aren’t they?

256

I’ve been in lurker status for a long time, trying to finish my thesis, but after reading thru this thread, I felt the need to respond.

After some of Bricker’s comments, I can’t help but smell some very rank hypocracy going on here. He says there is an on-going effort to eliminate the religious meaning of Christmas from the winter holiday celebrations with the implication of an effort to elimiate Christianity from the public sphere.

The Christians decrying this war against them need to look at their own actions! The collective Christian community has declared war on others, specifically the GLBT community. This war (either guerilla or standard warfare) has been conducted in both the private and public sphere influencing both private opinion and public policy. These Christians are using the same techniques against others as are (supposedly) being used against them. Again, hypocracy! I think we’re all familiar enough with the news to realize how Christian organizations are often behind legislation that either removes legal protections for the GLBT community or seeks to penalize them. In the private sphere, they run the gamut of portraying homosexuals and homosexuality as either “wrong” or “bad” to outright demonization and harassment.

If these Christians want to claim that there’s some “war” against them, that’s fine. But they certainly need to look at their own actions before they cast stones at others.

257

Sorry to nitpick, but Dickens is about my favorite author.

It is, of course, ancillary to the main story, and Jesus is not actually invoked by name (so I guess you’re technically accurate), but the clear reference is in the story nonetheless.

Thus ends my trivial clarification that doesn’t really contradict the main point of Tom’s prior post. Carry on.

258

Only if you are being disingenous. How can it be baffling? Many Christians make no secret of the fact that they consider they worship the one true god and others do not but should. To such people, failing to actively promote Christianity is like failing to promote the difference between healthy and poisonous substances. Neutrality is not, to them, a morally appropriate option.

259

I took it to be an experiment in seeing how far one could stretch the conventional cheesy Christmas story without breaking it.

I’m looking forward to see what Bricker makes of all this when he’s back on deck. It’s pretty rare to get to page 6 without the debate getting down to tin tacks.

And just so as not to appear to be a mere spectator here, both “pro-life” and “pro-choice” are unfair terms in the abortion debate.

260

cough