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Playing the Victim and Other Cherished Holiday Traditions
Brad Stine is a stand-up comedian who has performed at Promise Keepers gatherings and churches. Using niche marketing to his advantage, he sells DVDs with titles like "Tolerate This!" to conservative Christian Nationalists. In his recent book Live from Middle America, Stine describes himself as "a conservative comedian, one of two known to exist in the Western Hemisphere (and the other isn't funny)." Apparently he doesn't include the Blue Collar Comedy Tour performers, who sell many CDs, are known by liberals and libertarians, and riff on Hillary Clinton, going to church, and capital punishment in very conservative ways. So began two-hundred-odd pages of alleged "humor" that read more like whining, stereotypes, and liberal-bashing to me. Jeff Foxworthy isn't mean and can make bi libertarian Pagans like me laugh; that's probably why he isn't conservative enough for Brad Stine to count. That said, his "Merry Halloween" chapter came back to me recently. Stine had taken on gays, atheists, and liberal scientists; of course he had to discuss how liberals are trying to take the Christ out of Christmas! Stine's "jokes", like most attempts at humor, are rather revealing: "I miss the days when Christmas was a holiday everyone celebrated, regardless of their personal religious beliefs.... "Much to my dismay and that of most Christians I know, 'Merry Christmas' has been replaced with the watered-down, bland 'Happy holidays,' which is a catchall for any possible fringe belief you have decided to manufacture. (The only thing worse than 'Happy holidays' is 'Season's greetings'.) So now, most Americans in the cowardly tradition of standing up for everyone else's issue but their own say, 'Happy holidays, because I don't want to say 'Christmas' in case you don't believe in Christmas!" "Trust me, I don't follow in those footsteps. I say 'Merry Christmas' to everyone I meet. It's especially gratifying if they are walking out of an ACLU fundraiser. Try it." If one didn't know anything about Christmas, one would guess from these paragraphs that the meaning of the holiday is to assert Christian supremacy in America rather than to honor Jesus. Unfortunately, Stine has plenty of company, in the form of interest groups that aren't trying to be funny. For the fourth year in a row, the Liberty Counsel, based in Orlando, launched their "Friend or Foe" Christmas campaign. Hint: if you run a store, school, or office, and attempt to be polite to those who may not celebrate Christmas in any way, you're probably a "foe". To quote their October 11th press release: "On its web site, http://www.LC.org, Liberty Counsel offers a Help Save Christmas(TM) action pack, which includes educational legal memoranda to educate government officials, teachers, parents, students, private businesses, employees and others that it is legal to celebrate Christmas. The action pack also includes an "I [Heart] CHRISTmas" button and bumper sticker, an "I Helped Save Christmas" button and bumper sticker, and sample ads for use in local newspapers to promote Christmas. The ads point out that celebrating Christmas is still legal in schools, on public property and in private businesses and offer Liberty Counsel's free assistance to those facing persecution for celebrating Christmas. Last year many churches placed these ads in local newspapers. Again this year, thousands of public school teachers and administrators who are members of Christian Educators Association International have joined the Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign." On October 20th, the Liberty Counsel sent its supporters an "Alert" stating that Christmas-stealing "Grinches" are already in force. They note that "The ACLU has threatened to sue Berkley, Michigan over a nativity scene display which also includes a Star of David, Christmas trees, a Santa Claus figure, a Santa's Mailbox, and a 'Seasons Greetings' sign." Worse yet, national chain retailers are trying to accommodate all of their customers, not just the Christians! A man from Mississippi reported his tale of persecution: "In a town where I work, Lowe's ... has already insulted me with their 'Happy Holidays' on everything in the store. Sure there is an angel or two and maybe a small nativity display for sale, but most everything there is 'Holiday'." The painful experience endured by this model of Christian masculinity is to be taken as a harbinger of worse to come: "If we ignore these attacks on Christmas that seem small, we will eventually be faced with persecution as our faith is swept from the public square. The secularization of Christmas is nothing new. Christianity Today reported a few years ago that in the Vietnamese province of Dak Lak, children's choirs were forbidden to sing "Silent Night." The Soviet Union eventually folded all Christmas commemorations into New Years celebrations. From 1969 to 1997, Christmas was banned in Cuba. Such examples are endless. It's time to band together and help save Christmas." The cause of saving Christmas is being taken up at the grassroots level. In Radford, Virginia, retired music professor Lewis Sheckler distributes signs saying "CHRISTmas Gift of God," with a small cross. By e-mailing and meeting with pastors, he has distributed thousands of these signs at $1.50 each. These 26-inch-wide hardboards are intended to be planted in yards. "It is just a forthright statement regarding what Christmas is about," said Sheckler. "One of the great things about this sign is that this is a Christian public expression the ACLU cannot censor. I think that is one reason the sign is so popular." Of course, we all have the right to decorate our lawns, homes, and apartments for whichever holidays we please, in whichever manner we please. When I lived in the Orlando area, I knew several Jews who observed Hanukkah with elaborate displays of blue and white lights on their homes. It is, after all, a celebration of light enduring at a dark time. This is no manufactured fringe belief, as Brad Stine might allege--the celebration and the story behind it predate Christianity. As a Pagan, I celebrate the Winter Solstice. My atheist wife feels she can celebrate, too, as the natural cycles of the earth also include her. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year. Pagans celebrate the return of the light on that long night, as the days can only get brighter from there. To my wife and I, it seems natural to deck the house in white lights, including in a pentacle pattern. I am, to the best of my knowledge, modernizing a celebration observed by my European ancestors thousands of years ago. All this is to say that it seems ludicrous to label the lights households like ours will be using this December "Christmas lights." To call them "holiday lights" is not an assault on Christianity; it's a statement of fact. So too is it a statement of fact that Christmas is one holiday among many observed in America, and that not all Americans believe in it. "Holiday" is a compound word derived from "holy" and "day". Doesn't that describe what Christmas is supposed to be for those who observe it? And isn't it supposed to be happy? In Fire with Fire, feminist author Naomi Wolf observes that men are used to seeing themselves reflected in societal funhouse mirrors that made them appear twice their size. Now that men are being given true mirrors that show their true size, and being made to see that they are equal to women, they feel shrunken. They are not diminished, but they feel diminished without that larger-than-life societal reflection, and they don't like it. Christian Nationalists who fret about the imminent demise of Christmas (as if the retail industry would allow that!) are also used to seeing themselves as larger than life, the 800-pound gorillas of society. Now they are being shown that they are the same size as anyone else, that their holiday is one of many, and that their religion is one of many. They don't like this new view, and they are doing their best to break the mirror and diminish the rest of us. The alleged "war on Christmas," unfortunately, didn't end on New Year's Day 2006. It will probably endure for years, until Christian Nationalists get used to the sight of their true image. It will take many Christians who mean that old-school stuff about peace on earth and goodwill towards man to stop the madness. Until then, the rest of us will continue to ask, as I did out of sheer frustration at the Yahoo! Answers site earlier this week, "When did 'Merry Christmas' become equivalent to 'Screw You, Non-Christians'?"
Playing the Victim and Other Cherished Holiday Traditions | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 hidden)
Playing the Victim and Other Cherished Holiday Traditions | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 hidden)
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