Christmas was ruined!

[mmcirvin]

The "War On Christmas" hysteria is going full steam again:

Governments that have put "holiday trees" on display have been lambasted, and retailers that wish customers "Happy Holidays" have been threatened with boycotts and pestered with phone calls and online petitions. Started three years ago, the campaign will be the groups' largest.

That these people see their paranoid, joy-killing shaming campaigns about how people celebrate a holiday as a fight against "political correctness" is one of the most extreme expressions of Poetic Justice as Fairness that I've ever seen.

(Especially since, before these campaigns began, the American religious right usually satisfied itself with complaining about the modern celebration of Christmas being too Santa-y and not Jesus-y enough. I have to admit that reframing their annual carping about Christmas in terms of a defense against anti-Christmas forces is a canny move.)

I'll also say what others have said before: my recollection is that all this genericized "Happy Holidays" stuff started not as a sop to Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her religion-averse friends, but as an attempt to be inclusive of Jews. It was perhaps somewhat feeble in that capacity—I know I've heard Jews complain about the ahistorical elevation of Hanukkah as a Christmas substitute—but I sometimes wonder if the campaign against "Happy Holidays" really has easily-offended secular humanists as its primary target.

Comments

[jarai.livejournal.com]

I don't think they're doing enough to bring back Christmas as it should be celebrated. THEY NEED TO BRING BACK KRAMPUS!

[jwgh]

I seem to remember complaints about the secularization and commercialization of Christmas from when I was growing up too. Do those still happen?

It seems like if you want to encourage public celebrations of a holiday in a commercial, secular culture the result will be the commercialization and secularization of that holiday, but I suppose that many would try to question the second half of that.

War on Christmas?

[swinehund.livejournal.com]

Where do I sign up?

I don't particularly care about religious people celebrating their holidays in a personal manner, as they see fit. The problem I have with Christmas is that it's in the public space, for six weeks or more. It's pretty difficult to not celebrate it. Easter, Ramadan, Yom Kippur, I see very little of those and feel like I'm free to avoid them as I like.

Even the 'Happy Holidays' is kind of a weak concession to people who don't celebrate Christmas, as there are still lights, garlands, and a lot of really annoying music in every public space to make you feel out of place if the spirit is not moving you. I am not celebrating a holiday of any sort around this time (though I don't really mind getting a few days off). It's not that I mind the lights and decorations so much either, they just have unshakably unpleasant connotations for me. Christmas is such an emotionally charged (and especially neurotic) holiday for many families, so for dysfunctional families it tends to involve more drinking and fighting than average. I don't really like everyone I meet rousing those memories for me for six weeks straight. I know that this is the case for many other people too, so even though I support taking the religious connotations out of the public sphere, it's more of an issue of not enjoying having my unpleasant memories rubbed in my face.

[http://users.livejournal.com/erasmus__/]

I wonder how many of these people wonder if they're going to hell for not inviting their gay family members to spend time with them on Christmas?

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

Maybe there needs to be a genuine war on Christmas. Not a literal one, but one where people say enough is enough already. Christmas gifts and decorations show up before Halloween, radio stations throw out their formats and play Christmas music from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day, and you can't throw a dead cow without hitting someone's garish Christmas light display. For the love of corn, cut it out already. You don't have to put lights on all 18 of your miniature fur trees for us to know you're really Christian. We'd believe you, even without the tinny sounds of "Feliz Navidad" coming from the Santa doll on your porch, you know the one, it's dressed like an 80s rap star.

It's all commercial, anyway. Why Christians feel so compelled to defend two solid months of crass commercialism that benefits a few megabillionaires and has nothing to do with Christianity is beyond me.