The War on the War on Christmas Kicks Off With Biggest Logical Leap of the Year
| Fri Nov. 21, 2008 7:13 AM PST
It's that time of year again. From now until December 26, expect over-the-top proclamations from your favorite conservative hacks about how our inability to say the words "Merry Christmas" is a sign of this country's imminent downfall. And it's not just our culture that suffers because of our overzealous political correctness, says Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger. In the most absurd (and least substantiated) logical leap of the year, he claims our economy is being destroyed as well.
"And so it will come to pass once again that many people will spend four weeks biting on tongues lest they say "Merry Christmas" and perchance, give offense. Christmas, the holiday that dare not speak its name.
"This year we celebrate the desacralized "holidays" amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin — fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy."
Yup. It has nothing to do with the government's financial overseers being asleep at the switch, or a decades-long conservative push for deregulation, or even the greed of lenders who gave out bad loans in order to make millions and Wall Street types who created financial instruments they could not understand in order to make billions. Nope. The stock market is tumbling, unemployment is growing, and people across America are feeling the pinch at their kitchen tables because your local Target has a "Happy Holidays" banner out front.
You aren't getting away with it any longer, Target. Daniel Henninger has exposed your scam. Angry mobs are coming to your locations to scrawl "Merry Christmas" over your "desacralized" signs, and then everyone will feel better and start buying TiVos and the economy will be great again.
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Comments
There's one thing I've never really understood about all the conflict that surrounds this issue, is that in my life, there doesn't seem to be a dearth of "Merry Christmas" wishes going around. Granted, I was raised in Missouri, a conservative state, so the fact I heard it all the time in public discourse is not groundbreaking. However, I live in Chicago as a happy political and (a)religious liberal surrounded by happy liberal friends and no one I know is particularly angry about "Merry Christmas" being said. Of course, I hear the occasional gripe from a friend, but it seems the polemics of both sides, the one proclaiming "Put Christ back in Christmas" and the other proclaiming that the disappearance of religion is imperative for the survival of humankind, aren't really representative of the sentiment of most people - liberal or conservative. Maybe it's just my particular setting. Maybe most people do indeed feel this passionately. However, we just got done listening to endless polemics about who we shouldn't vote for, who's a terrorist, etc. Can't we give it a break?
Am I wrong in thinking "Desacralized" means "removed from the sacrum" and not "made non-sacred?" I mean, it's clear what the jackass is trying to say, but I like to leave the word inventing to the funny fake reporters, not these faux news clowns.
Yeah, this guy is a tool. Isn't 'holiday' a modernization [within the larger scope of things] of the phrase 'holy day'? What is so 'desacralized' about 'holy day'? Or is it because it might allow a little room for honoring a religion other than Christianity?
However, if you think about it, the dip in sales of all things that say 'Christmas' would theoretically be offset by the purchase of red and white camouflage that we in the Anti-Christmas Army use to sneak behind enemy lines, snipping string lights, tearing down tinsel and overturning the figurines in nativities. They should think of our movement as an opportunity.
@ Carlos - please tell me you are making a bad joke here, and that the far-right, wing-nut hate-filled "Christian" fundamentalists haven't started reading and commenting on MJ now, in addition to all their other venues.
If you're NOT joking, I am seriously depressed - and YOU are seriously mentally ill... go find some fascist rag (like WSJ) to peddle your virulent anti-Semitic tripe.
BTW, didn't anyone ever tell you Reb Yehoshua ben Yosef was Jewish? In case you are as dumb as most of the Xtian fundie breed, that was the name of the Jewish carpenter's son the Greek-trained scribes (like Saul of Tarsus, another Jew, aka "St. Paul") called "Jesus"...
