Yes, Christmas is over and the alleged war to drive the holiday from the public’s mind through subversive “happy holidays” greetings can go back underground for another year. But before we drop the issue entirely, I have a final thought.
Bill O’Reilly, Charles Krauthammer, and the truly ridiculous Committee to Save Merry Christmas have been whining for weeks about the tendency of some Americans to wish their friends and family “Happy Holidays.” There have been multiple calls for boycotts; one high-profile religious right leader said use of the “Happy Holidays” phrase is a “pointed assault on our civil liberties”; while another pastor recently insisted that Christians are the victims of a “reverse apartheid,” all because not enough people wish Christians a “Merry Christmas.”
But before we leave this manufactured controversy for the next one, I’d like to encourage these “victims” to consider the reality that exists just outside their sad, small imaginations.
For example, there’s the idea of celebrating Christmas in Iraq.
Iraqi Christians won’t be celebrating Christmas this year. Midnight mass, the centerpiece of Christmas festivities in Iraq, has been canceled because of night-time curfews.
Few will be showing up to church on Christmas morning, scared that insurgents who have bombed churches, mosques and Muslim religious festivals, will strike again.
“We usually go to midnight mass and then a celebration and then we go home where the family gathers for dinner,” said Bushra Gorjis, 31, a cleaner. “This year we are not going to church because everyone is scared of the terrorists.”
Then there are those who want to recognize this holiday in China.
A human rights center said armed police broke up Christmas Mass at an underground Catholic church in eastern China, arresting the priest, demolishing a makeshift pulpit and scattering two thousand worshippers.
Police had previously torn down the church, in a family courtyard, four years ago, but parishioners had begun rebuilding it in defiance of Chinese law.
The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said police with guns came and tore down the stage, seats and entrance gate that the group had erected for the Christmas Eve service.
Considered in context, O’Reilly and his gang calling themselves “victims” is to give “gall” new meaning. These are people are part of a majority faith, in a country where the overwhelming majority of people celebrate Christmas and under a secular government that recognizes Christmas as an official holiday. They hear some seasonal temp at the mall wish them a generic “Happy Holiday” and suddenly they feel like they can relate to Nelson Mandela.
On the other side of the globe, meanwhile, real Christians aren’t able to celebrate Christmas at all for fear of being shot.
Conservatives’ complaints would be comical if they weren’t so pathetic.