December 6, 2020

By Bill Berkowitz

Think the War on Christmas ended when Bill O’Reilly, the disgraced former Fox News Channel host, declared victory in 2016? Think it ended when former President Donald Trump told Americans that it was now safe again to say Merry Christmas? Think again! The folks at the Fox News Channel have found new villains in their annual re-play of the “War on Christmas”: President Joe Biden’s sloppy handling of the supply chain; and Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose warning about Christmas gatherings has brought down the network’s hammer.

Former President Donald Trump and disgraced Fox News broadcaster Bill O’Reilly are beginning a four-date speaking tour on December 11. Will these super-spreaders resuscitate their versions of the War on Christmas?

What exactly is the War on Christmas? How long has it been a staple of conservative politics?

“Now that we’ve left Afghanistan, the War on Christmas is the longest-running war in American history,” The Bulwark’s Jim Swift recently wrote.  “Though a war, technically, needs two sides,” he added, “and this one is really only being fought by social conservatives searching for an enemy.” While I thoroughly enjoy Swift’s lede, it’s not quite accurate, in that an actual war on Christmas – not the myth we’ve been dealing with for almost two decades -- began with the arrival of the Puritans in the 17th century.

As The Daily Mississippian’s Hal Fox recently explained: The modern “war on Christmas is the idea that atheist liberals, Muslims, the political and financial elite and (depending on whom you ask) the devil himself are all conspiring to make the United States a nation of anti-Christians by tearing down references to Christ in government buildings and coffee cups alike.”

The war on Christmas, however, goes back centuries, although its most fervid battles have occurred over the past fifteen to twenty years.

Here is a brief history:

*   The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned 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 blamed 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 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 blamed the Communists: In 1959, issued a 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, promoted 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 wrote 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 claimed that any curbs on Christmas was tantamount to “hate crimes against Christianity.”

* Jerry Falwell accused 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, became 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 picked 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.”

But apparently, the war is not really over. This time the Christian right is linking President Biden, the erratic supply chain, and Dr. Anthony Fauci to the war on Christmas.  On October 4, a segment on Fox & Friends criticized Fauci, the White House COVID-19 adviser under both Biden and former President Donald Trump. "No wonder Dr. Fauci is about to cancel Christmas," host Brian Kilmeade said, referring to Fauci’s warning about family gatherings at Christmas in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. "We're not going to have any presents anyway, so it's going to really work out," Kilmeade added. 

"This is the guys who is trying to steal Christmas," the House Republican caucus tweeted about President Biden in October. "Americans are NOT going to let that happen."

The War on Christmas is not yet in the rearview mirror according to The Bulwark’s, Swift. He reported that post-Thanksgiving, Fox News hosts even blamed this year’s shortage of Santas on Joe Biden.

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