The Secret Truth Behind the "War on Christmas"

The Truth Behind the “War on Christmas”

Of course, you know there is no war on Christmas and never was. The folks who claim otherwise are the slice of America that bemoans the Most Favored Religion status that Christianity had half a century ago. You know, religious pageants by all the kids at the PUBLIC school (including the kids whose parents were trying to teach them a different religion, or wanted their kids to have only science as their guide to life. The latter is sad, but certainly it is every parent’s right to not have a religion shoved down their children’s throats.). Christian religious decorations all over the schools. Christian religious symbols all over public, paid for by your tax dollars, government buildings, where the whole community needs to enter to receive a dog license, contest an easement or just go to work. Easter (not Spring) Break, which followed a Christian religious holiday.

Eventually, when enough new Justices were added, people who revered the Constitution and its hallowed separation of Church and State, the Supremes decided that it was all too egregiously unconstitutional. Hallelujah, said the vast majority of devout Christians, who could see the dangers to their religion in becoming a de-facto State Faith. Religion is irredeemably damaged when it gets wrapped around political power. Examples abound, both today and in previous centuries. [Email me PRIVATELY for details.]

The reason you can say Merry Christmas to someone and that someone has no idea what you really mean is because Dec 25 is a secular, civil holiday for the entire nation of citizens, as well as a religious holiday for a slice of those citizens, and the word “Christmas” has been appended to BOTH of them. If you say Merry Christmas you could be wishing someone a happy secular, civil holiday – or you could be greeting a co-religionist. You could be greeting a co-religionist and wishing them a happy BOTH holidays. Is this crazy? Ya sure, you betcha.

HOW did we get to this crazy state of affairs? The way we get to most messes: a cabal of people tried to get ascendency by grabbing power, not by earning respect. In this case, a group of Christian lawmakers thought of a clever way to make their religious holiday a national holiday – establishing their religion as the State Faith without being so overt about it that even a conservative Supreme Court couldn’t stomach it. The law establishing Dec 25th as a national, civic – secular! – holiday stated that Christmas was a holiday that was about family (not religion) and as such was embraced by all corners and segments of American society. It wasn’t true then, but the law made it so!

And that, dear devout and religious Christians, is why you can’t “Put Christ in Christmas” unless you are talking about your private religious celebrations, where he’s pretty well entrenched, you’ll have to admit. No, you can’t get Christ into a secular, civil holiday because – establishing your religion is unconstitutional in the USA. The national shopping, eating, visiting-family, commercial holiday with Frosty and Rudolph belongs to We the People. It’s a civic holiday and capitalism and customers can do whatever we like with it. THAT is the result of your co-religionists trying to pull a fast one with the US Constitution a century ago. Let that lesson sink in, really, really deeply. The reason that Christmas is no longer exclusively a day that a religious leader was born is 100% your own damn fault. 100%. You created this mess. It’s all on you. And this is one genie you will never, ever get back into the bottle.

You COULD repeal the designation of Dec 25 as a national holiday and have it return to just being a personal-choice day that religiously-inclined people can ASK their employers for [no guarantees, and it is close to the end of most companies’ fiscal year, so – good luck with that], but neither you nor the rest of us will get a paid holiday. Much less Dec 24th, Dec 26th or any other day prior to New Year’s. Wanna start using your personal vacation time to have a day or two off and skip the whole family travel thing? Hmm? Didn’t think so.

Neither will the rest of the overworked, exhausted 350 million rest of us who look forward to the only long Federally-encouraged family time off from work.

Because of the confusion with both holidays using the same words, people who are not aggressively trying to get back those halcyon days of unconstitutionality – which includes Christians who want to protect their religion as well as those of other, or no, faith tradition – coined the respectful Happy Holidays, to acknowledge that civil holiday, as well as Yule (Wiccans & other Neo-Pagans), Solstice (everyone), Hanukkah (Jews) and Bodhi Day (Buddhists). Respect is the foundation of a law-based, justice-focused democratic society. Respect is good.

And why do I say “Christians who want to protect their religion”? Well, if a holiday is purely religious, you have control of it. If you allow the name and the date to be used as a national secular holiday, then it belongs to all of us, and that includes Madison Avenue, the retail industry, Hollywood and any and all other commercial ideas that the human mind can think up.

you really follow the teachings of that marvelous, inspirational Jewish Palestinian construction worker of two millennia ago, start campaigning for a national, secular Yule Holiday on the 21st, or the 26th or some other late-December day [we need a long holiday close to New Year so we can have that family and rest time], so you can have your religious holiday back. The only thing you can’t have: Your religious ancestors wanted to force everyone to celebrate their religious holiday, as a way of either converting us all, or rubbing our faces in a de-facto theocracy.

Them days are gone for good, no matters what lies a President or politician tries to spin. You can’t slip a theocracy past the Supremes in the 21st Century, even a pack of Republican Justices. But you can put Christ back into a new exclusively-religious holiday. Heck, you could even move it back to when the Messiah was actually born – late March or early April. We’ll still have Christmas, that “family holiday enjoyed by all sectors of American society. “

Deck the halls with boughs of whatever and happy eggnog to us all, every one!

Tubman's Glory is Our Hour of Glory as Well

 I admit it, when the news first broke about Harriet Tubman being chosen for the new $20 bill, I was disappointed.  For about 30 seconds, I mourned the loss by my top choice from the short-list.  Eleanor Roosevelt has always been one of my heroines, with her tireless advocacy for the homeless and dispossessed of the Great Depression, and all the courage that took, to allow herself to be so hated by the big-money interests, what we would call the 1% today.  She cared about women, about children, about animals and natural resources, about infrastructure and about the power of the vote.  Members of the 1% who break ranks and stand for economic and social justice - a country that lives up to its hype - deserve great praise.  Eleanor worked monster days to get fractious enemies to collaborate on the initial UN documents.  The fact that the UN isn’t as effective as she/we all hoped it would be doesn’t change the glory of her dedication to that hope.

But it was only 30 seconds.  I’ve always admired and adored Harriet Tubman also, another woman of enormous personal courage, who maintained a sharp tell-it-like-it-is tongue for those who needed a swift kick and a kind heart for those in affliction – that difficult combination.  Contrary to what some of her admirers have been saying, she was not a one-issue woman.  She didn’t just care about ending slavery.  She didn’t just care about the economic and social plight of newly-freed but resource-destitute black farmers, and the urban black poor.  She also championed women of all colors, who were no more powerful than slaves in the mid-19^th century, who were beaten and killed with impunity, who had no power to obtain a divorce or retain custody of their children if they were dumped by a husband wanting a younger model, or even travel as they chose.   She cared about factory workers who signed contracts forbidding them to quit or complain of abuse and ill treatment, and who also could be killed by goon squads with impunity if they tried to organize or blow the whistle.  She annoyed abolitionists who sanctimoniously condemned black slavery while making a fortune on this factory-slavery, by calling them on their hypocrisy.  She cared about the treatment of animals, horses in transportation and on farms, and pets in the cities.  No one is perfect, and she had plenty of human blindness and flaws, but she tried hard to make the world a better place for us, her spiritual descendants, and for that, she absolutely deserves the place of honor on America’s most popular bill. 

Jackson will be gone soon, although not entirely; he will be on the flip side of the bill.  Perhaps the next generation can get rid of him entirely.  Much ink has been spent on his racist, genocidal actions against the native people of the south.  He was also an awful president, per se.  His spoils system fit the backwoods money-grubbing mentality of his peers on the frontier, but as a responsible principle to run the government of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious supposedly-better-than a child’s view of “fairness,” it’s appalling.  The fact that historians are reluctantly, and not whole-heartedly stating the obvious – He was an awful President; any one of the other candidates would have been a genuine statesman in comparison; OMG - is a belated step in the right direction. 

And a big shout-out to the writers who have managed to discuss all the various candidates for the new face of the bill without resorting to cheap racial reasoning.  Soapbox commences:  No, everyone who says that Harriet was their original #1 choice isn’t a better human being than people who originally had a different candidate in mind, even if they are telling the truth.  All the potentials were wonderful, admirable people who would honor our country’s currency and ourselves for recognizing their value.  No, people who had a warmer spot for a different woman aren’t racists.  If we used that word sparingly, and for people who are truly and provably motivated by hate, then the real tribulations of my sister and two brothers, and my black friends, would not risk being trivialized by over-use.  I don’t want to see the word “racist” trivialized.  The pain that true creeps like Donald Trump cause is too serious.  End of soapbox.

Everyone’s favorite bill is getting a face to be proud of.  Glory, glory, hallelujah!  One giant leap for all of us….