It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like the Holidays

Well, I'm still here in Minneapolis, hanging out with my grandfather while we work on getting a home health care worker to care for him and figure out the various transportation options for him to access so he can see his wife at her nursing care facility. But on the bright side, I'm getting to experience a bit of my old hometown that I miss in my rain-soaked home of Seattle: snow. I just woke up to find a new blanket of puffy white snow, with more flakes flying throughout the rest of the day.

I've been feeling very cut off from the world without my constant access to the Internet, so I signed up for a free month trial of AOL dial-up to ease the pain. And on firing it up this morning, I came across this extensive "Talking Points" article--The So-called War on Christmas by Adam Cohen--in the NYTimes (well, Times Select to be more accurate--and yes, Virginia, it's only available to TS subscribers). It's a good round-up of all the various and sundry skirmishes that have been going on this season as well as noting the generals who are fueling this war (Bill O'Really, John "Five in the Noggin" Gibson, the Family Research Council, the Catholic League). And it comes to a not-so-surprising conclusion (well, at least to my eyes):

It is a manufactured crisis. Christmas is a holiday that is primarily celebrated in churches and in the home, and by all accounts it is thriving. The reason conservative media outlets have to keep pounding away at the theme, clearly, is that most Americans who are busy celebrating Christmas with family and friends are probably under the impression that the holiday is doing just fine.

Religious conservatives are using Christmas for a political purpose: as a cudgel to push the prayers and displays of their own form of Christianity into public spaces, including public schools, and to make America more like a theocracy.

The Christmas defenders' real enemy is not secularism, but inclusiveness. Department stores have been using phrases like "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" because they want to make themselves appealing to as many customers as possible — including the nearly one-quarter of Americans who do not call themselves Christians — not because they hate Christmas. Governments walk a careful line regarding holidays because they don't want to fall afoul of the First Amendment, and because they want to make all of their constituents feel included in holiday celebrations.

Despite all of the attention the conservative media have given the "War on Christmas," it does not appear to be catching on with the general public. The reason Christmas defenders are unlikely to win in the long run is not because they are up against a liberal plot, but because they are on the side of intolerance.

He continues with this thought later in the section subheaded "The Myth of the Liberal Plot:"

There is a simple explanation for the increasing use of phrases like "Happy Holidays" — but it is not one that the Christmas "defenders" want to talk about.

The nation is rapidly becoming more religiously diverse. The percentage of the population that describes itself as Christian has declined to 77 percent in 2000, from 86 percent in 1990. The biggest increase has been in people who do not identify themselves with any religion, a group that has more than doubled since 1990.

America is still very much a country of Christians, these numbers show. But nearly a quarter of the country, representing as many as 70 million people, is not Christian. It stands to reason that stores and politicians would try to take into account the inclinations of such a large part of the population.

It is good business and good electoral politics, but it is also the American way.

President Bush — who is hardly suspected of being a liberal plotter — and Laura Bush sent out 1.4 million cards this holiday season. The cards, which are paid for by the Republican National Committee, wish recipients a "happy holiday" rather than a "Merry Christmas" — as President and Mrs. Bush have done every year of the Bush presidency. The artwork is also distinctly secular: the president's two dogs and a cat on the White House lawn.

The Christmas defenders, naturally, have expressed their outrage. But President and Mrs. Bush are unrepentant. "Certainly President and Mrs. Bush, because of their faith, celebrate Christmas," Laura Bush's press secretary told the Washington Post. "Their cards in recent years have included best wishes for a holiday season, rather than Christmas wishes, because they are sent to people of all faiths."

I have no problem with folks celebrating Christmas with decorated trees and greeting others with a hearty "Merry Christmas." But, as David Letterman used to say (and maybe still does--I've not seen his show in many a year), this is not a competition, it's an exhibition. Remember the whole melting pot ideal of America? It's not just for pious Christians (or fundy Christianists) any more.

Oh, and if you haven't seen this delicious Sam Seder-fest on CNN, when he was going up against Bob Knight of the Culture and Family Institute (yeah, not that other Bob Knight), Atrios has a large chunk of the transcript. Here's a sample:

SEDER: Listen, as far as the war on Christmas goes, I feel like we should be waging a war on Christmas. I mean, I believe that Christmas, it's almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons, can be an imminent threat to this country, that they have operative ties with terrorists and I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas. And hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

PHILLIPS: Is it a war on Christmas, a war Christians, a war on over-political correctness or just a lot of people with way too much time on their hands?

SEDER: I would say probably, if I was to be serious about it, too much time on their hands, but I'd like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and al Qaeda.

PHILLIPS: I don't think that exists. Bob? Help me out here.

SEDER: We have intelligence, we have intelligence.

PHILLIPS: You have intel. Where exactly does your intel come from?

SEDER: Well, we have tortured an elf and it's actually how we got the same information from Al Libbi. It's exactly the same way the Bush administration got this info about the operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam.

War, what is it good for. Absolutely nothing. Say it again...