War on Christmas 2009

Time for the 4th annual War on Christmas – War on Christmas, 2009!

This year, I am going to say a lot of the same things I said last year, mostly because the argument has not changed, but the tactics of certain Christian organizations have gotten stronger. Beware – the War FOR Christmas is heating up, and the War for Christmas army is at the ready.

The War on Christmas is supposedly a “secular war” waged against Christmas. Christians all over the world don’t like it when people don’t recognize their holiday, so much so that they are willing to force businesses to use the word “Christmas” in their advertising. They are willing to boycott businesses that don’t. The message to businesses is clear: use Christmas in your advertising, or we’ll stab you in the eye with our wallets.

While secular people are minding their own business, Christians all over the USA are boycotting businesses that don’t happen to have chosen to use “Christmas” in their advertising. They (the War on Christmas folks) have gone so far as to set up a website wherein one can update the “naughty” or “nice” list. The “naughty” list is those businesses that allegedly don’t use Christian language in their advertisements, and the “nice” list is those that do. You can also find other
websites devoted to making sure everyone knows just how much more important Christmas is then every other holiday at the end of the year. This is mostly done in the name of “anti political-correctness” but ends up being more about intolerance – intolerance at businesses trying to include other groups of people who celebrate minority holidays during the holidays.

Why, why is it so important that people acknowledge your holiday that you will refuse to shop at businesses that don’t? I’m glad atheists don’t act like this. Yet secular people are the ones painted as being “Grinches”.  It seems to me that the Grinches are the ones insisting once again that they are being persecuted and stamped out, organizing boycotts and to shove Christmas down the throats of everyone else. I know it hurts when a tiny slice of your monopoly on the country gets taken away or when you find out that there are people in the world who aren’t exactly like you. But really, those guys who care enough to boycott businesses are acting like a child forced to share one toy out of the hundreds in his toy box with his cousin.

I don’t know any atheist, Muslim, Jew, or anyone else complaining about Christmas advertising. I know of no huge organizations (such as the Catholic League) of non-Christians insisting that their flock boycott businesses that display Christmas-related schlock. There is a small movement of people dedicated to the war on the commercialization of Christmas and even that is not a war on the religious aspect, it’s a war pro-the religious aspect. Really, it’s nice when people recognize that not everyone is a Christian. If you say Merry Christmas to me, I don’t care all that much. When you cry victim and insist with your wallets that Christmas be part of advertising, I start to care.

Here is the message I hear: everybody who is a Christian has the right to demand that retail sales clerks intuit that they are Christian and thus wish them a merry Christmas – affirming their own personal “reason for the season”. Affirm that we both love baby Jesus or THIS MEANS WAR.  If you don’t recognize exactly what we recognize on this day, we will hate you for being liberal atheist politically correct secular scumbags. Are people really serious when you say it’s evil and suppressive to call an annual holiday party at your work a holiday party instead of a Christmas party?

I do think it’s silly to call “Christmas trees” “holiday trees”. That would be like calling a Menorah a “holiday candelabra”. So while I do agree that political correctness can go too far, “happy holidays” doesn’t cross the line. Even if I think it’s silly, I am not going to wage a war on businesses that call Christmas Trees holiday trees and force them to call them Christmas trees. These are just words. It’s not worth getting bent out of shape over. Also, why aren’t Christians annoyed that secular businesses like Walmart use their religious holiday as a marketing ploy to get you to buy junk you and your loved ones don’t need? If anything, they should be boycotting retailers for using Christmas as a way to capitalize on their religious beliefs. Supposedly Christmas is about the joy of the birth of Jesus, right?

It’s not as if secular people are stopping people from celebrating the holiday they wish to celebrate. There is no ban on Christmas. As much as you love to celebrate it, it’s also inescapable. We couldn’t avoid it even if we wanted to unless we hid in our houses with the TV off all day – and even then. Why can’t I buy stamps or milk on Christmas? Whether we like it or not, we’re going to be involved in recognizing the holiday sorry, Christmas. No one is being denied their right to celebrate Christmas – though I am certainly being denied my right to have just another day. I can’t ignore Christmas, because it is impossible to ignore.

Let’s concoct a fun little scenario. Let’s say atheism becomes so widespread that atheists get some random day designated as “Godless day”. Two months before godless day, businesses all over start putting up “Merry godlessness” decorations. We devote entire radio stations to music promoting atheism, and we play atheist musak in retail stores. We organize parades that take up city streets, throw decorations up everywhere, and generally stuff our reason for the season down your throats.  On godless day, most businesses close down so that you can’t get your oil changed, your laundry done, or mail any packages. Moreover, if businesses don’t acknowledge Atheist Day in their advertising, we organize a boycott. If you’re a war on Christmas pundit, this probably sounds incredibly crappy and offensive, doesn’t it? What about the guys who don’t celebrate atheism? Are they to simply fade into the background and be absorbed by our festivities? Well no. Try to think about this from another perspective – the best way to do that is to pick a religion or a worldview you don’t especially agree with and pretend that they are doing the same thing you are doing.

Being civil and polite means recognizing that people are different, and not making those differences a point of conflict and contention. Yes, it’s okay to say Merry Christmas: or Happy Hanukkah, or Merry Kwanza, or Happy Just Another Day. It’s okay to encourage people to say Happy Holidays. It is not okay to force people to recognize your holiday. It’s not okay, as a business, to insist your workers don’t say Merry Christmas – thankfully, that’s never actually happened.

Merry Friday!

Happy War for Christmas!

Happy Just another Day!

Happy I get to take a day off work even though I don’t celebrate this holiday day!