War on Christmas - revisited

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Bricker

I see the distinction, and I think there’s a difference between “offense” and “defense” here. But your specific example is “defense” - if a store forbids “Merry Christmas,” then THAT is the attack, and the effort to replace “Happy Holidays” is the defensive move.

I wasn’t aware that stores had the power to “forbid ‘Merry Christmas.’”

I suppose what you’re actually referring to is instances when businesses voluntarily exercise their own rights to represent theimselves however they see fit. Do you believe that employers have no right to set policies on how employess should interact with customers? Are you seriously suggesting that a business which chooses voluntarily to use the term “Holidays” instead of “Christmas” in its advertising and store displays is attacking Christmas.

If I tell you “Happy Holidays” on a message board am I attacking Christmas? Are you offended? Are you a victim? Are we “at war?”

What’s the difference between me doing it or Wal-Mart doing it?

[black_rabbit]

I know for a fact that you can get food out of the vending machines at the Cincinnati Public Library between sunup and sundown during Ramadan.

The only reasonable conclusion is that the librarians are waging a War on Islam.

[Bricker]

@Diogenes the Cynic

I suppose what you’re actually referring to is instances when businesses voluntarily exercise their own rights to represent theimselves however they see fit. Do you believe that employers have no right to set policies on how employess should interact with customers? Are you seriously suggesting that a business which chooses voluntarily to use the term “Holidays” instead of “Christmas” in its advertising and store displays is attacking Christmas.

A hypothetical: if a store reaches the “Happy Holidays” decision because a group threatens a boycott if they do not, I’d say that’s a “War on Christmas” event. If a store reaches that decision as an ordinary exercise of marketing, then it’s not emblematic of a “War on Christmas.”

Do you see the distinction?

[Bricker]

@black455

I know for a fact that you can get food out of the vending machines at the Cincinnati Public Library between sunup and sundown during Ramadan.

The only reasonable conclusion is that the librarians are waging a War on Islam.

Not at all.

I’m very surprised at this attempt at analogy. It shows a complete disregard for almost everything in this thread.

Now, if vending machines that dispensed food during Ramadan were placed in an area that had, up til then, celebrated Ramadan, with the motive to disrupt or vitiate the celebration of Ramadan… then, yes, I’d say you were making the case for a “War on Ramadan.”

[DoctorJ]

I think “War on Christmas” implies a concerted effort, or at least common goals. What we really have here among Gibson and O’Reilly’s examples are three different things.

–Legitimate attempts to curb legitimate (or at least arguably legitimate) establishment clause violations.
–Retailers and other businesspeople who see no reason to exclude anyone from the year-end spending orgy, and thus want to be as inclusive as possible.
–School administrators who have no understanding of the law and who have inflated fears of lawsuits (which are not helped by reactionary books stating that liberals are at war against Christmas) and thus go too far in prohibiting religious expression.

Three groups, three clearly different goals. How on Earth do these add up to a “Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday” (as the book’s subtitle claims)?

The book’s description at Amazon says:

Traditionalists get upset when they’re told—more and more these days—that celebrating Christmas in any public way is a violation of church and state separation. That is certainly not what the founders intended when they wrote, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

They should get upset when they’re told that, because it isn’t true. Of course, the only people telling them that are the Bill O’Reillys and the Pat Robertsons and the John Gibsons. Gibson and the people who buy his claptrap are taking multiple unrelated goals, combining them into one colossal strawman of a position, and applying it to the left as a whole (or at least a substantial enough portion of the left to make a difference).

So if by “there is a War on Christmas” you actually mean “there are some people in America who for various reasons wish to tone down certain exclusively Christian religious expressions during what most Americans, regardless of religion, have come to accept as a season of celebration”, then fine, call it what you want. You have to accept, though, that 1.) that’s a pretty silly thing to call it, and 2.) that is far from what Gibson and his ilk are claiming is happening.

[Zakalwe]

@Bricker

A hypothetical: if a store reaches the “Happy Holidays” decision because a group threatens a boycott if they do not, I’d say that’s a “War on Christmas” event. If a store reaches that decision as an ordinary exercise of marketing, then it’s not emblematic of a “War on Christmas.”

Do you see the distinction?

I’m willing to grant this distinction for the sake of moving this along. Fine. Now, please prove that any store has done so. Further, please demonstrate why this is any more or less concern-worthy than the numerous instances of the Crazy Christian Crusaders threatening stores for the purpose of forcing them to endorse the Christian religion via “Merry Christmas”.

[DoctorJ]

While I was writing my previous post, Bricker said:

I’m amazed that we’re four pages into the thread, and people are still spending energy trying to defeat my argument that the war on Christmas is a coordinated, concerted effort.

When I never once made such an argument.

Then calling it a “War on Christmas” is pretty silly, as are your assertions from a book that claims this all to be part of a “liberal plot”.

[DoctorJ]

Consider other “wars” that we’ve waged against phenomena–the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism. The purpose of calling these efforts “wars” was to imply a coordinated, concerted effort to eradicate the problems.

Certainly, any war we declare as a country against another country is a coordinated, concerted effort.

If this is what you are defining as a “War on Christmas”, I believe that an argument can be made that there is a War On pretty damn much anything.

[sqweels]

@Bricker

A hypothetical: if a store reaches the “Happy Holidays” decision because a group threatens a boycott if they do not, I’d say that’s a “War on Christmas” event.

Tell us more about this group. Who are they? What exactly are their goals and motivations? Have they targeted churches in any way?

[MaxTheVool]

First of all, I appreciate the fact that despite your position being (a) batshit crazy, and (b) attacked by a really large number of people, you have hung around and continued to discuss it in a calm and rational fashion.

That said…

@Bricker

…are not united in their desire to be rid of Christmas entirely, although I believe some of them would like just that.

You think there are people in the US, or at least people aside from the extreme and irrelevant lunatic fringe, who have a desire to be rid of Christmas entirely? Seriously?

But many others simply want to remove any tint of religious meaning from Christmas,

You believe there are people in the US, or at least people aside from the extreme and irrelevant lunatic fringe, who want to remove any tint of religious meaning from Christmas? Seriously?

And in particular, do you think that any of the people involved in the so-called War on Christmas fall into the above categories? For instance, any of the people in Plano? Or the executives of any corporations that use “Happy Holidays” as their in-store greeting?

And reasonable people may participate in guerilla warfare, too. I grant you that “War on Christmas” is a title that is designed to paint the people on one side as less reasonable than the people on the other… just as pro-life and pro-choice are such titles.

There are a couple of huge differences, though:
(1) “Pro-life” and Pro-choice" both err in being too positive, as opposed to too negative. It’s much less objectionable, and much less likely to turn reasonable debate into a hate-filled flame-fest, to describe onesself in too-glowing terms, as opposed to describing one’s opponents (or their position), in too-negative terms. It’s fairly silly to describe the against-legal-abortion side as “pro-life”. It would be equally silly to describe the for-legal-abortion side as “pro-death”. But “pro-death” would be VASTLY worse as far as engendering a climate of reasoned debate and respect.

(2) “Pro-life” and “pro-choice” kind of cancel each other out. Also, it’s certainly the case that abortion IS a real and meaningful issue. It’s not like abortion never used to be an issue, and then someone came up and invented a hilariously incendiary name for the pro- or anti-legalized-abortion position, and then tried to use the passions incited by that incendiary name to CREATE an issue where there wasn’t one before. Anyhow, if you want to keep talking about the War on Christmas, and claim that’s a fair and reasonable term, how would you feel if your position was described as the “Movement to Ass-Rape the Bill of Rights”?

Anyhow, another important point about the issue as a whole: There IS a meaningful and non-trivial question as to where exactly the line should be drawn in venues like public schools. And there are zillions of public schools, and this is a litigation-happy society. Therefore, the mere existence of lawsuits (in either direction) on this issue hardly demonstrates that there’s specifically a War on Christmas. If you got a list of all lawsuits filed concerning public schools in the US in the past 5 years, sorted them by topic, and found every topic about which at least 3 or 4 lawsuits were filed, would it be in any way meaningful to say that you had discovered a WAR on anything?
Oh, and we’re still waiting for a cite for your claim that the Illinois state government forbade its employees from saying “Merry Christmas”.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Bricker

A hypothetical: if a store reaches the “Happy Holidays” decision because a group threatens a boycott if they do not, I’d say that’s a “War on Christmas” event. If a store reaches that decision as an ordinary exercise of marketing, then it’s not emblematic of a “War on Christmas.”

Do you see the distinction?

I see the distinction clearly but apparently you do not.

[Nature_s_Call]

@Bricker

Nature’s Call post 316 suggests that this is merely part of the on-going evolution of Christmas. That may be true. It doesn’t negate the fact that people, and groups, are creating this “evolution” through use of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits. This is a change from the past. That is, I’m referring not to the change in how we celebrate Christmas, but a change in how we change the celebration of Christmas. And because this method of change is contentious, and involves adversarial court action or the threat of it, “War” is appropriate.

Would you, as a lawyer, consider the fact that divorce court cases constitute a war on marriage?. No single case, of course, but in the aggregate. Such cases are more fiercely adversarial than School Board v. The Red Green Show. Sure, the rise in the number of divorces may indicate a trend away from the once sacred institution - but a war on marriage?

Reasonable people avail themselves of the adversarial civil court system for all kinds of matters. These people, typically, would not consider themselves engaged in a war.

I agree that the word “war” can be used in the metaphorical sense without the need of literal generals and armies. But the metaphorical use must map to at least the essential elements of a real war: an intentional effort to defeat an opposing force. It is not a war when a forest encroaches into a nearby clearing by the aggregate mini-invasions of individual seeds. Even if one stretches and says the nearby clearing was “conquered” there’s not enough similarity to rightly use the word “war.”

[ul]
[li]Christians claim the true meaning of Christmas is centered on celebrating the birth of Christ.[/li][li]This celebration traditionally is a mix of religious observance and social activities[/li][li]There has been an drifting away from the religous aspects of Christmas. The focus now is more in the social activities with observance of Christ’s birth becoming less and less central.[/li][li]In the current state of affairs a great number of people truly and deeply celebrate Christmas with perhaps a fleeting thought towards the birth story. Athiests honestly and without contradiction celebrate Christmas.[/li][li]There is a confluence of other traditions that occur within the same time as Christmas: Chanukah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, Saturnalia, etc. At one time these other celebrations (besides New Years) footnotes, rarely though of. Now they are much more prominient.[/li][li]Christians feel that the relegating “true” meaning of Christmas to the backburner is a bad thing, and many feel threatened or attacked by the current state of affairs.[/li][/ul]

I hesitate to put words in your mouth, Bricker, and I do stand to be corrected. But it seems to me that thoughts along the lines of the above came first. Then you started looking for proof of the"war" and came across these various law-suits. Thus armed, you presented the impression akin to, “you know, I was thinking about these law-suits and it got me to thinking maybe a war is going on.”

The Christian definition of the “true meaning” has lost significant ground, and I sympathize that Christians may not like it (I wonder if the pagans did way back when?) It is an unfair, though, to claim “war on Christmas” is a descriptive term to describe the events that cause you concern.

[Dangerosa]

@Bricker

Not at all.

I’m very surprised at this attempt at analogy. It shows a complete disregard for almost everything in this thread.

Now, if vending machines that dispensed food during Ramadan were placed in an area that had, up til then, celebrated Ramadan, with the motive to disrupt or vitiate the celebration of Ramadan… then, yes, I’d say you were making the case for a “War on Ramadan.”

Or say, for instance, formerly having Halloween celebrations at school, and switching to “Harvest Celebrations” might be considered a “War on Halloween.”

[Bricker]

@DoctorJ

Three groups, three clearly different goals. How on Earth do these add up to a “Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday” (as the book’s subtitle claims)?

I am not adopting the book’s premise in toto.

So if by “there is a War on Christmas” you actually mean “there are some people in America who for various reasons wish to tone down certain exclusively Christian religious expressions during what most Americans, regardless of religion, have come to accept as a season of celebration”, then fine, call it what you want. You have to accept, though, that 1.) that’s a pretty silly thing to call it, and 2.) that is far from what Gibson and his ilk are claiming is happening.

1. I think it’s a not a neutrally-descriptive phrase, but it’s no more silly than calling baby murderers “pro-choice”. (Or, if you prefer, “…no more silly than calling anti-reproductive-rights fascists ‘pro-life.’”) In other words, it’s not the first rhetoric-laden shorthand the world has ever seen.

2. True, but irrelevant to this thread.

[Nature_s_Call]

@Bricker

However, when a major retailer instructs its employees to NOT say “Merry Christmas,” that’s another tactic, not involving government, but a part of the war I’m describing.

Foul!

Unintended side-effects that occur while pursuing something positive does not a war make.

Store: We love all of our customers. We want them all to feel welcome in December. Ideas?
Clerk: Let’s say “Happy holidays” so no one feels left out.
Store: Great idea!

I’ve not heard anyone saying “Hey! That store specifically said, ‘Do not say Happy Chanukah!’ I’m offended.” If the Happy Holidays thing is part of the war on Christmas, why is it not also part of the War on Kwanzaa? Please, do not say “aggregate” again, unless you mean aggregate of nonsense.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Bricker, as I see it, angels are white; for all the information in that complaint, the PTA could have been adopting an angelic theme instead of a pagan Holly-based theme for their Christmas holiday. It is utterly ridiculous to infer from a letter asking for white napkins a hostility toward Christianity. Completely ridiculous. Your cite puts quotes around the White Napkins Requested bits but not around the No Christian Colors bits, because those bits were not in the letter. They were in the fevered imaginations of the plaintiffs, and only there.

If you want to offer a specific stronger case to establish a war on Christmas, this would be a great time to do so. But if the Plano case–in which a PTA had a party with a snowy color theme, and some parents freaked out about it–is a typical example of the “War on Christmas,” I have to say that the old peace slogan has finally been answered.

Daniel

[Orbifold]

@Nature's Call

Foul!

Unintended side-effects that occur while pursuing something positive does not a war make.

Store: We love all of our customers. We want them all to feel welcome in December. Ideas?
Clerk: Let’s say “Happy holidays” so no one feels left out.
Store: Great idea!

I’ve not heard anyone saying “Hey! That store specifically said, ‘Do not say Happy Chanukah!’ I’m offended.” If the Happy Holidays thing is part of the war on Christmas, why is it not also part of the War on Kwanzaa? Please, do not say “aggregate” again, unless you mean aggregate of nonsense.

Don’t be silly, if Bricker ever bothered to bring the question of motivation into consideration he wouldn’t be able to call them “attacks”. And then where would this ridiculous proposition be?

[Aholibah]

@Bricker

I1. I think it’s a not a neutrally-descriptive phrase, but it’s no more silly than calling baby murderers “pro-choice”. (Or, if you prefer, “…no more silly than calling anti-reproductive-rights fascists ‘pro-life.’”) In other words, it’s not the first rhetoric-laden shorthand the world has ever seen.

Did you miss where MaxTheVool exploded this analogy, or are you just choosing to ignore his very salient point?

@MaxTheVool

“Pro-life” and Pro-choice" both err in being too positive, as opposed to too negative. It’s much less objectionable, and much less likely to turn reasonable debate into a hate-filled flame-fest, to describe onesself in too-glowing terms, as opposed to describing one’s opponents (or their position), in too-negative terms. It’s fairly silly to describe the against-legal-abortion side as “pro-life”. It would be equally silly to describe the for-legal-abortion side as “pro-death”. But “pro-death” would be VASTLY worse as far as engendering a climate of reasoned debate and respect.

I know you’re familiar with the term “poisoning the well.” Are you really incapable of seeing that that’s exactly what this particular bit of ‘rhetoric-laden shorthand’ accomplishes?

[MaxTheVool]

@Bricker

I am not adopting the book’s premise in toto.
…
2. True, but irrelevant to this thread.

On the contrary, that’s VERY relevant to the thread, at least the part of the thread which is discussing how appropriate it is for you to use the phrase “War on Christmas”.

If your position is that you do NOT agree with the conclusions and claims made by people who are much louder and more famous and more prominent than you, but you claim that some much more limited things are true, but you want to use the same propagandistic phrase… well, that’s a TERRIBLE idea. It’s like saying “I disagree with the New Orleans mayor when he famously (and stupidly) said he wanted a ‘chocolate New Orleans’. But I do think that in a very limited sense it’s important that African-American small businesses are attracted to New Orleans. So I’ll call my effort to encourage that the ‘Chocolate New Orleans’ initiative, and get all huffy when people don’t immediately realize what I’m talking about”.

OK, that’s not a great analogy, but my point is that it’s already silly for you to use as divisive a phrase as “The War on Christmas”, and it gets even SILLIER when that phrase is being widely and vocally adopted by a bunch of assholes, but you want to use it to mean something different from what they want it to mean.

[Steve_MB]

@Bricker

So if by “there is a War on Christmas” you actually mean “there are some people in America who for various reasons wish to tone down certain exclusively Christian religious expressions during what most Americans, regardless of religion, have come to accept as a season of celebration”, then fine, call it what you want. You have to accept, though, that 1.) that’s a pretty silly thing to call it, and 2.) that is far from what Gibson and his ilk are claiming is happening.

2. True, but irrelevant to this thread.

On the contrary, the gulf between a)wishing to tone down certain exclusively Christian religious expressions during what most Americans, regardless of religion, have come to accept as a season of celebration and b)orchestrating a nefarious [ OMINOUS ECHO EFFECT ] Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday [ /OMINOUS ECHO EFFECT ] is central to the issue before us (for those who came in late, that’s “Is there an ongoing phenomenon that may reasonably be characterized as a ‘War On Christmas’?”).