Urgent ‘War on Christmas’ update

November 17, 2007

Guest Post by Morbo

I hate to keep carping about the “War on Christmas,” but there have been major developments, and I believe you need to be informed.

The Liberty Counsel has issued its annual “Naughty and Nice List.”

This legal group, associated with Jerry Falwell before his demise, puts out a helpful list (.pdf) advising you which retailers to avoid and which to patronize. The criterion is simple: whether the word “Christmas” is used in sales material and on websites.

Unfortunately, the list does not address every issue that might confront zealous fundamentalist Christians, Bill O’Reilly and various other Christmas Nazis over the next six weeks. I want to help the Liberty Counsel in its quest to force Christmas down the throat of every American, so I’ve compiled a list of some specific situations and questions that the list fails to address:

* Unnamed Retailers: A lot of retailers aren’t even on this list. I need to know if I can patronize Meineke Mufflers next month. Little help, please!

* Mixed Messages: Some businesses are clearly trying to play both sides. Every week the gang at the Vermont Country Store sends me a catalog. Some mention Christmas on the cover, some do not. Worse yet, some use the term “Holiday” on the cover but say “Christmas” inside. Does that count? What am I to do? This list provides no guidance.

* Type Games: This list says nothing about the always-crucial issue of font size. What if the catalog uses both terms, but “Christmas” is in smaller type than “Holiday”? Is that insult to our Lord and Savior big enough to trigger a boycott?

* The Greater Good Conundrum: Here’s one for all of you Jesuits out there: Let’s say I can achieve greater good by buying something from a merchant who uses the term “Holiday.” Is it ever morally licit to do so? What if an item I want to buy is 50 percent off from a store that uses the term “Holiday”? Can I take the money saved and give it to a TV preacher — or is the money saved ill-gotten gains that would be rejected by any morally upstanding television evangelist? (I think I know the answer to this one. Operators are standing by to take your check.)

* Suspected Tricks/Clarence Thomas Factor: What about retailers that use the term “Christmas” but don’t really mean it? If the local adult DVD store is having a “Christmas Sale” on sex toys, whips and dog collars, can I buy some? If going into such a shop is considered a sin but Clarence Thomas is hanging around outside, can I give him the money and ask him to pick the items up for me since I wouldn’t actually be entering the store?

* Exploding Head Paradox: Let’s say my local book store is having a “Christmas Sale.” Is it permissible to go there and buy something that makes fun of Christmas or the faith that spawned it, like a Christopher Hitchens book or this horrifying Billy Idol CD?

I’ve heard that in the Middle Ages, learned theologians spent hours debating questions like how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. We’re not getting that kind of attention to detail from today’s religious fanatics. To Liberty Counsel, I can only say that the list is not enough. Next year, send some instructions as well.

P.S. This week, Pat Robertson said on “The 700 Club” that Christmas trees are not worth making a fuss over because they “come from Teutonic Paganism” and “are not an integral part of Christianity.” You know things are getting bad when even Robertson starts making sense.

I’m all for a return to basics. Since Christianity has become no more than an orgy of buying, let’s replace Christmas with the original Roman holiday the Christians usurped: Saturnalia. A good week-long drunk is the only way to welcome the rest of dreary winter while we await the fertility rites of Spring.

  • 1) The rabid religionists seem to be going for a surge strategy.
    2) Don’t they know that the origin of the word holiday is ‘holy day’? How much more religion do they want?
    3) We really, really need to start taxing religious enterprises. Preferably prohibitively. All this excess time and money on the part of the fundamentalists is becoming a social problem.

  • In addition to Saturnalia, the American Fundamentalist version of Christmas also contains a healthy dose of Yule, that Teutonic pagan celebration to which our friend Pat Robertson was referring. Lots of fun to be had in that tradition as well.

    The early Christians were smarter (and more tolerant) than their descendants. They took an attitude of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” and encouraged their converts to retain their old customs.

    Morbo, I didn’t realize that you are a victim product of Jesuit training. It explains a lot.

  • I was laughing very hard at the Clarence Thomas scenario and then I made the mistake of clicking on the Billy Idol link.

    WARNING! Do not click on the B.I. link if you have food/beverage in your mouth.

    Morbo, please send your concerns directly to the Liberty* Counsel. This post is comedy gold. It reminds me of the “letter” from a supposedly concerned Christian who wanted to make sure he was following the word of the Bible to the letter.

    tAiO

    *The use of the word Liberty should not be interpreted to mean these goons think you are free to do anything except pray and write checks.

  • What if the company that has Christmas emblazoned everywhere with wasteful carbon burning lights abuses children in the basement, or bribes my congressman? Do I still have to buy from them? Is it only words that count and not the deeds? I always thought it was the other way around.

  • As for me, I think I’ll boycott all stores that use the non-inclusive “Merry Christmas” in their advertising instead of “Happy Holidays”, which covers all holidays celebrated during December and extends to cover the New Year, too. I can get everything all in the same place.

    Would it be wrong to buy a kid’s Hanukka dreidle in a store that’s emblazoned itself with “Merry Christmas”?

    Maybe RW religious idiots should boycott all stores that try to sell anything but items relating to the religious aspects of Christmas. That means no toys, no clothes, no books or CDs except those featuring “sacred” material, no holly, no Christmas ornaments or decorations, no jingle bells. It means that the only items that may be sold are manger scenes, angels, stars, frankincense, and myrrh.

    Works for me. The rest of us can make commercial merry at the stores that are emblazoned with “Happy Holidays”.

    And while I’m at it, what gives with “Merry Christmas”? Isn’t “merry” a secular word? Its derivation is the Keltic “mear”, or “mir”, which means “to sport”. I’m sure it wasn’t a “merry” time for the Virgin Mary to endure agonizing labor and give birth in a stinky barn. And surely the wise men didn’t “make merry” on their long journey for a visit. That would have been very unholy, and furthermore they would have called attention to themselves and been robbed of all those valuable gifts they brought. I am very suspicious that the very language desired by the RW is just not appropriate.

  • n. wells at #2:

    “how much more religion do they want?”

    oooh,oooh, pick me, mr. kotter! i know the answer to this one! oooh! oooh!

  • If Pat Robertson finally gets that Christmas trees aren’t an essential part of the religious nature of Christmas, can the realization that the whole shopping thing is also BS be far behind?

  • I’m sure it wasn’t a “merry” time for the Virgin Mary to endure agonizing labor and give birth in a stinky barn.

    Ah, but if the TalEvan started to think that “Merry” was really a coded reference to “Mary,” we’d get to watch them run around telling retailers they couldn’t say Merry Christmas but had to say Happy Christmas.

  • Anney, just a small quibble:

    Many believers in the Virgin Birth of Jesus believe that Mary was a “virgin ever after as before,” meaning that Jesus exited her womb just as miraculously as he arrived there. He would therefore have been born without “agonizing labor.”

    The barn probably was stinky, however. Unless the animals miraculously were poop-free.

  • Okie

    But “virgin” today means “a female who has never ‘known’ a man,” not an intact hymen Lots of virgins don’t have them and it ain’t from messing around. Wouldn’t a virgin still be a virgin after a birth if she’s never had intercourse?

    Well, those believers sure think about things I never did… Do you suppose they believe Jesus was born through Mary’s navel? Seems like that would be more agonizing than the natural way.

  • I thought the Christmas Tree was supposed to have been Martin Luther’s idea. He was certainly no pagan. Teuton maybe, no favorite of the pope at the time, absolutely (no pun intended). But pagan? Uhhh, no.

  • Anney: You pose some difficult questions. Of course it all depends on what the meaning of “virgin” is, but that phrase seems almost Clintonesque (not that that there’s anything wrong with that).

    Some cultures have gone so far as to examine prospective brides for that all-important intact hymen. If a girl’s hymen was broken in some other way, it would seem reasonable to me to consider her still a virgin, but many people would disagree. Perhaps we should invite some Muslims into this conversation since some of them seem to put a much higher premium on virginity than we do these days in twenty-first century Christian America.

    If a woman has never “known” a man but has given birth naturally as a result of in vitro fertilization, is she still a virgin? I would say no, but that’s just an uninformed opinion.

    Jesus’ mother is said by some to have given birth as a “ray of light passing through a window.” This would appear to allow her to remain a virgin “ever after as before” with an intact hymen, and avoiding that other horrible means of birth that you described. I suspect that an intact hymen was the standard of virginity to the people who came up with that doctrine.

  • One other small quibble, Anney. The magi weren’t there while “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” were in the manger. They were actually living in a house, and the magi showed up more than two years after the purported nativity. See Matthew 2:1-16, emphases on verse 16.

    It’s really a shame that xtians don’t know their own scriptures.

  • Okie, I am still a virgin. I have never been with a woman, though I am now 43. As a gay man, I have been both the recipient and provider of non-vaginal sex. Are definitions really so important? Has the definition of “carnal knowledge” changed so much?

  • Dear old Pat isn’t going far enough. Jeremiah 10 condemns the practice of cutting down trees and decorating them as a heathen practice.

  • Isn’t Santa Claus the Teutonic contribution to the pagan festivities?

    I personally think we should all take the entire month of December off and celebrate every holiday that falls in the period. That way there would be peace on earth and goodwill to people, a la Gloria Steinem.

    Michael W.

    I’ve read many places that the meaning of the word, “virgin”, associated with the Biblical Mary, had nothing to do with carnal experience at all, but was used by translators to mean a young unmarried woman or a maiden.

  • Michael, I see your point. Similarly, lifelong lesbians would be virgins, having never “known man,” right?

    What I really think, all kidding aside, is that virginity is a stupid, ancient concept that was developed by men to make sure that a bride’s first child was fathered by the husband. It had everything to do with an intact hymen. When we try to apply the concept of virginity to men, all sorts of situations occur that don’t fit the standard model, since men don’t have hymens. I think that the “virgin birth” concept in Christianity was expanded to emphasize that Jesus’ father wasn’t the rumored Roman soldier.

    Anney said: I’ve read many places that the meaning of the word, “virgin”, associated with the Biblical Mary, had nothing to do with carnal experience at all, but was used by translators to mean a young unmarried woman or a maiden.”

    Exactly right, Anney. It was the later Christians who found importance in Mary’s hymen, and mistranslated the gospels’ “unmarried woman” into “virgin.”

  • I think that my head is going to explode! Almost all of our Christmas celebrations have been borrowed from other sources and all are secular. So who the hell cares, except the idiots at FOX…and that includes Oreilly.

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  • Ummm Jesus had brothers & sisters. Mary might have been a virgin (hymen intacta) at some early point, but she certainly didn’t stay that way. Nor was there any need for her to. Jesus had the necessary lineage. His brothers and sisters didn’t have a zillion prophesies to fulfill so they could enter the world in the usual way.

    Two points for the guy who (almost) got the timeline on the magi correct. The magi were there shortly after Jesus birth but, realizing what they had been duped into doing, took the long way home. Meanwhile, Joseph, Mary and Jesus beat a hasty retreat for Egypt where Joseph got a part time job as an usher in a theater and Mary taught disadvantaged children how to play Scrabble.

    Or something like that.

    Note also that the magi were astrologers (a forbidden occupation) came as an emissary of a man who wanted Jesus dead just badly enough to kill two years worth of male children from the whole region that Jesus was born in. Do you really think that God sicced ’em on his kid?

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