Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Is Right-Wing America’s Forever War on Christmas Coming To Your Town?
(John)
December 4, 2022
By Bill Berkowitz
There’s a War on Christmas/coming to your town
If you can’t get with the program/You best not be around
They demand all say Merry Christmas/Not Happy Holidays
The War on Christmas is coming/You best get out of the way
The War on Christmas is as American as Election deniers; mass shootings across the country; attacks on abortion rights; outrageously high gas prices; and the growing scourge of income inequality.
Here is a brief history of the War on Christmas:
* The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ban Christmas celebrations, before eventually unbanning them: “The original war on Christmas was waged during the sixteenth and seventeenth century by Puritans, or Protestant Christians who believed that people needed strict rules to be religious and that any kind of merrymaking was sinful,” Remy Melina wrote at livescience.com. "Shocking as it sounds, followers of Jesus Christ in both America and England helped pass laws making it illegal to observe Christmas, believing it was an insult to God to honor a day associated with ancient paganism," according to Shocked by the Bible (Thomas Nelson Inc., 2008).
* Henry Ford blames the Jews: “Last Christmas most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated Someone's Birth,” according to Ford’s The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, a widely distributed set of anti-Semitic articles published in the automobile magnate’s newsweekly during the 1920s. “People sometimes ask why 3,000,000 Jews can control the affairs of 100,000,000 Americans. In the same way that ten Jewish students can abolish the mention of Christmas and Easter out of schools containing 3,000 Christian pupils.”
* The John Birch Society blames the Communists: In a 1959 pamphlet titled "There Goes Christmas?!" a writer named Hubert Kregeloh warned, "One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas -- to denude the event of its religious meaning."
* In 1999, anti-immigrant polemicist, Peter Brimelow, promotes the idea that there was a War on Christmas, blaming almost everyone, especially immigrants: “The root cause in all cases is the same: an American elite which is increasingly divergent, culturally and even ethnically, from the rest of the country.”
* Fox News’ John Gibson writes a screwy book about it: “The Christians are coming to retake their place in the public square, and the most natural battleground in this war is Christmas," Gibson, then a Fox News host, stated in his 2005 book The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought. “Every time a supermarket checker or store clerk greets you with [‘Happy Holidays’] instead of ‘Merry Christmas,’ you have met another soldier in the War against Christmas,” Gibson said.
* Paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan claims that any curbs on Christmas was tantamount to “hate crimes against Christianity.”
* Jerry Falwell accuses leftists of wanting a godless America.
* The American Family Association monetizes it: The longtime Religious right group launches boycotts of companies refusing to mention Christmas in its holiday advertisements. The AFA publishes its annual “naughty or nice list.”
* Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, then the host of most popular cable-news television program, becomes the war on Christmas’ most vociferous and enthusiastic voice: “Remember,” O’Reilly said in 2004, “more than 90 percent of American homes celebrate Christmas. But the small minority that is trying to impose its will on the majority is so vicious, so dishonest—and has to be dealt with.”
* Generalissimo Donald Trump picks up the battle flag during the 2016 presidential campaign. Less than a month after winning the 2016 election, the President-elect declares victory in the War on Christmas. On December 15, 2016, O’Reilly rejoiced in announcing that “the good guys” have won the "War on Christmas.”
* In 2021, Fox News Channel hosts search for new entry points: They blame President Biden for his shoddy handling of the supply chain — thus depriving Americans of their presents — and Dr. Anthony Fauci for grinching America’s holiday spirit with warnings about COVID transmissions.
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For a takedown of Dennis Prager’s paranoid fantasy about “Merry Christmas” and its attack on religious people, see Big Joel’s YouTube video @ www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G56_mQwyBM
For a lighter view, see Ken Burns’ “The War on Christmas” @ www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEpsrg42DyU
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