It’s that Time of Year
Yes, time for those in the vast majority, who already enjoy their beliefs having predominance in the culture, and who regularly oppress others, to make themselves feel better by acting like they’re the victim: the now-traditional right-wing celebration of the imaginary and invented War on Christmas™.
In the town of Tulsa, OK, the organizers for the annual parade, for the second year running, are calling it a “Holiday” parade instead of a “Christmas” parade. Conservatives are (still) outraged.
If only there were some term that could be used instead of “Holiday” which would include Christmas instead of excluding it!!
Seriously, the question is, why are the wingnuts offended? “Holiday” includes Christmas, so Christmas is not being snubbed. On the contrary, “Holiday” includes everyone, meaning that if you celebrate other traditions, you will now officially be included in the festivities. Using “Christmas” only, and in particular protesting the more general, inclusive term, means that you are offended when other people are included in the celebration.
Essentially, they want to celebrate their holiday alone and tell everyone of differing beliefs to go screw themselves, they’re not welcome. This is America, where only Christianity is welcome, and if you don’t like it, then shut your yap or move to China, you treasonous commie punk.
The rest of us would like a nice, enjoyable celebration for all.
Sorry if the word “bigot” offends anyone, but as they say, if the label fits.
well, this isn’t really ginned up news.
20% of the country really feels strong about this stuff, especially the older people who grew up in the 1950s like my mom.
But why? Because they haven’t thought it through, or because they don’t want anything non-Christian to be recognized?
On another front, I do think it’s still ginned-up news, in the sense that the whole concept in the first place was created by these people. The most recent iteration didn’t make it happen, of course, but it did originate on Fox and with right-wing pundits and politicians. Without them creating the false impression that Christmas is being persecuted, I don’t think that even close to 20% would even be aware anything was different from before, much less that it’s a concerted attack on Christianity.
~20% of this country are beyond-the-bend fundamentalists/evangelicals.
They’ve bought into the God vs. Satan battle end-times thing and believe the secular humanists are in fact trying to purge our Christian traditions.
My family dragged me to a holiday service some years ago down in So Cal — the heart of the conservative Christianists (eg. “Promise Keepers”) — and their contemporary non-denomination Church.
While “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” has a pretty long tradition going back to whenever, they don’t want secularists being the thought police during Christmastime. They want to be able to celebrate their holiday as they see fit, even if it offends non-Christians.
Especially if it offends non-Christians. “We” were here first, “we” built this nation, all these new-comers can acclimate to “our” ways or GTFO.
“Christmas” is in fact being persecuted to some extent. That’s the push back here.
Maybe the Conservatives get offended because “celebrating the Holiday” is a meaningless bit of twaddle. What “Holiday”? If you’re celebrating Christmas, than just do it. Most people would like to be free to put up Christmas trees and sing Christmas Carols without worrying if every other World Religion plus Atheism feels adequately represented. Even in Japan, people celebrate Christmas (sort of) and don’t try to hide it as a Generic “Holiday”.
If the “people of differing beliefs” want to celebrate in their own way and don’t want to participate in Christmas than fine, go right ahead. But saying that the majority of Americans can’t celebrate Christmas for Political Correctness reasons just makes liberals sound like the Grinch.
PS. Nice addition to the ongoing “Conservatives are all a bunch of bigots” theme.
^ above, insert after non-denominational Church:
where the service consisted of a presentation by the http://www.wallbuilders.com/
it was utter bull but like intelligent design and the belief in American exceptionalism, it is an attractive ideology to adhere to.
“celebrating the Holiday” is a meaningless bit of twaddle. What “Holiday”
The one the Christians stole from the paganists.
Plus the new year’s. You know, the one that looks kinda similar to the oshagutsu stuff the Japanese do, if you squint your eyes a bit.
You really are the stupidest person I’ve encountered on the internet.
Nobody says “Hapy Holiday”. It’s “Happy Holidays”. It’s like you intentionally have to f–ck up reality for you to be able make a point on anything.
Sorry, wrong answer. “Happy Holidays” means Christmas plus New Years plus maybe Hanukkah. But this is a “Holiday” parade. So what is the “Holiday”?
This is actually the cumulation of a long trend. For many years, liberals have worked to secularize Christmas, substituting Santas and Snowmen for religious symbols. Now that Christmas itself is nearly totally secular, even the name “Christmas” is apparently deemed offensive and up for the axe.
Outside of San Francisco and NY’s Upper West Side, I really doubt that many Americans sympathize with this.
Geoff K :
Sorry, wrong answer. “Happy Holidays” means Christmas plus New Years plus maybe Hanukkah. But this is a “Holiday” parade. So what is the “Holiday”?
The Winter Holiday of one’s choice, obviously.
It’s a bit more complex than that. It’s been commercialized more than secularized, moving from a day of religious devotion to a day of family celebration.
We’re talking a mass cultural movement here, one of the most powerful we have. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, the Coca Cola Santa.
Santa here was filling a gap here in our collective desires, something the Three Wisemen and Nativity jazz wasn’t really doing the job at.
Indeed, this is where the battle-line is now, and Christians and Christianists certainly have a right to get their hackles up on this.
But this is a VERY long on-going “attack” on Christmas to make it more inclusive.
Typical mindless attack. The numbers are roughly 70% in favor of “Christmas” and 1 out of 4 in favor of “Holiday”.
Really! This agnostic feels that a Westerner has to go out of his way to say “Happy Holidays” instead of Happy Christmas. It is just silly political correctness. Like “chairperson” instead of chairman or, indeed, chairlady as the case may be. Inclusivity carried to the ridiculous.
Ever since Uncle Adolph made extensive use of it, Conservatives LOVE to revel in the “persecuted majority complex.”
Poor babies, it’s so hard to be a majority culture in a mixed culture land. Tough sledding for the dominators.
No, I don’t think anyone is getting it right here. Nobody is attacking anyone for saying “Christmas.” The parade is not publicly funded (the sponsor this year is a pub, McNellie’s, and previously was an electric company, PSO), therefore it could be marching saints and nuns and no one could object. Neither is anyone being forced to do anything.
This is simply casting a wider appeal. Businesses started doing this first years ago, because they don’t want to exclude anyone in their sales pitches, so they said “Happy Holidays” to speak to the widest possible audience.
For the Tulsa Parade, the sponsors had exactly the same idea, and stated so openly: the only reason they did this was to promote inclusivity–that’s it. No atheists were pressuring anyone, no court cases were involved. No one strong-armed anyone into changing anything, nor was there any protest about using the name “Christmas.”
Nor will Christmas be absent–the word “Christmas” will be used during the parade, there will be Christmas floats, Christmas music, people will sing Christmas songs, there will be a Santa–but there will also be other things, and the official aim of the parade is not, nor has it ever been, solely about Christmas. Were it to have come a month earlier, it would have been the Thanksgiving Parade of Lights. It’s a business promotion festival.
This is not about being PC, not about atheism, not about court cases–it’s about simply not excluding anyone from a festive event. The fact that it is even in the news is testament to the fact that a politician and a biased news network want to make the majority feel like it’s being persecuted.
Although I understand the ‘casting a wider net’ argument, I’m going to side with Geoff on this one. And what’s more surprising, I am from San Francisco!
Here is my take; here in the Bay Area, there is a huge push towards cultural and religious tolerance since we consist of such a diverse population. But I also sense a huge bias towards the little guy (e.g., smaller religions and ethnicities) while the needs of the larger group largely go ignored.
On example, when Luis and I were at college together, I remember seeing the “Asian Business Students Association” setting up their recruitment desk. I not only felt isolated from their club, but also was struck by the fact that starting a “Caucasian Business Students Association” would have been unthinkable!
If they can have their club, why can’t I have mine? I belong to an ethnicity as well! I even contemplated setting up a table (for one day only) right next to the ABSA table just to observe peoples’ reactions. Never happened, of course….
And now we have the same social bias; “there go those Christians trying to have their own holiday and their own parade.” I don’t think it is at all “bigoted” to want to celebrate Christmas in one’s own way. Why is it necessary to include all other religions/holidays into Christmas. Do we ask Chinese New Year parade to include a Santa Claus with their red dragon? Should Muslims also decorate their trees with ornaments? Of course not!
I say, let Christians have their parade if that is something sacred to them. Like many other religions and cultures, they just want to fight to preserve what little value is left of Christmas.
It’s like mixing coffee and tea in the same cup. Some things are better served separately.
there already is one — It’s called the Business World.
They can, but it would be about Three Wise men and stuff.
People don’t want another church service out in the cold, they want to have a fun winter holiday party with their families and community as a whole. This isn’t that hard to understand.
Christians stole the goddamn holiday to begin with, too. The BS stories they believe don’t even set a date of birth.
Luis, I just made a reply to Troy’s comments above, but don’t see it posted. Is that intentional?
[editor’s note: for a reason I have not yet been able to determine, this comment was misidentified as spam; my apologies, and I’ll be checking the filters.]
@Troy
Well, I think you make some valid points, but I don’t agree that the Business World is all Caucasian. Certainly, most of corporate America is white, but it’s not like the other nationalities (Japan, China, Brazil) are in business for charity. So I still feel the exclusive business “clubs” are a kind of racism, regardless of whether its a large race or a smaller one.
I would also make a case that Christmas should be inclusive to all forms of Christianity (e.g., Feliz Navidad and Noel) but should not include Hanukkah or Ramadan as these are a separate religions. The reason is that a holiday loses its meaning once it is diluted with other religious holidays. In the case of Christmas, commercialism has already transformed it into something of a farce, so it is a struggle just to keep what little value it has.
Having said that, if it’s a “One-World Religion” you aspire to, I would go along with that. I believe the time is approaching for religions to set aside their differences and address their commonalities. But so far I just see “Christmas” making concessions to include other holidays and not vice versa.
That’s the bias I see. You don’t see it?
Here is my reply, bit by bit…
@Troy
Well, I think you make some valid points, but I don’t agree that the Business World is all Caucasian. Certainly, most of corporate America is white, but it’s not like the other nationalities (Japan, China, Brazil) are in business for charity. So I still feel the exclusive business “clubs” are a kind of racism, regardless of whether its a large race or a smaller one.
Thanks for posting my reply, Luis.
I don’t know why my comments sometimes get filtered out.
Shorter comments (like this one) generally go thru without any delay…
Hope you can find/fix the problem.
Kudos to you!
–kensensei
No, that’s not my point at all. The whole point of calling these community parades Holiday parades can actually be seen as preserving whatever integrity Christmas still has.
But you only have to look at the current celebration of Christmas in Japan to see how easily it is corrupted. People WANT to have a nice holiday during the shortest days of the year, that’s why there was a solstice holiday to begin with and it’s what the early Christians coopted for their own celebration.
Not at all. If you want to celebrate religious BS (and expect others to join in), do it in your church and in your home, not on the public square.