The War On Christmas
By Keith Boykin, in sexuality
Friday, December 16 2005, 12:23PM
Call it what it is -- a right-wing snow job. Conservative talk show host Bill O'Reilly and friends are now trying to convince us that there's a "war on Christmas" in America. As proof, they point to the growing number of secular "holiday" celebrations obviously designed to drive out the more Christian-focused word "Christmas."
Shame on the Ebenezer Scrooge who uses the term "holidays" to refer to the series of events from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year's Day. Rebuke the mean old grinch who steals "Christmas" so that he can be inclusive of his friends who are Jewish or Muslim and celebrate their own holidays. No God-fearing, Wal-Mart loving, red-state Christian would dare exclude the name of his savior from the most sacred holiday in capitalism.
Let's be honest. There is no war on Christmas. If anything, there's a war on intelligence in America, and the lefties didn't start it. Every few years, the conservatives dream up some other evil threat to American civilization and they convince all the hinter-state yahoos to send money to stop blacks, women, Communists, environmentalists, the ACLU, pacifists, flag burners, liberals, gays, Christmas-haters from taking over America.
These people thrive off of hatred and fear. Their survival seems to depend on their ability to convince their followers to be afraid of all that is different from their white Anglo-Saxon Protestant middle-class American upbringings.
No, the liberals didn't start some new war on Christmas. This was a pre-emptive war started by the right-wing lunatics looking for weapons of mass distraction from the real issues facing America. These Sunday morning moralists don't want to deal with poverty, homelessness, unemployment, the lack of health care, or crumbling inner city schools.
So what would Jesus do?
Of course, Jesus would ignore those petty little social issues and take to the airwaves to complain about the war on his birthday and then drive off to the shopping mall in his 12 mpg SUV.
Enemy of the State
This whole thing started when the conservatives went looking for new enemies at which to direct their fear-mongering.
Jay Bookman writes in this week's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Think back a little more than a year ago, to the political campaigns of 2004. One of the hottest issues in presidential debates and congressional campaigns was the threat to traditional marriage posed by gay people seeking the right to wed."
"Barring a miracle, the family as it has been known for more than five millennia will crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself" unless the U.S. Constitution is amended, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said back then. The purpose of that rhetoric, Bookman explains, was to drive conservative voters to the polls in large numbers, to re-elect President Bush and increase Republican representation in Congress and state legislatures.
But a year later, Bookman asks, "Have you heard or read a single word about a federal gay-marriage amendment since the election?" No, you have not, Bookman writes, "because this supposedly all-important issue has vanished from the political landscape."
"A cynical person might look at that evidence and suggest that maybe the gay-marriage controversy was never real in the first place," says Bookman. "Maybe it was just a product, like soap or toilet paper, that was manufactured by politicians and then sold by certain media outlets and interest groups. Maybe those politicians never had any intention of trying to pass such an amendment and were merely playing their supporters for fools."
Bookman found not a single reference to gay marriage on the home page of Dobson’s Focus on the Family web site this week. Even the pages listed under "Public Policy" made no mention of the biggest issue of all time last year.
So what's going on here? "Basically, what you’re seeing is a retail operation, and gay marriage was last year’s inventory. It has been rotated off the shelves, at least for now, to make way for a holiday-themed product in exactly the same way that Home Depot removes inventory from its garden section to make space for Christmas trees," Bookman explains.
But of course Congress has plans to return to gay marriage when it's convenient next year, "in advance of the midterm elections." And why? Bookman explains: "Because you can’t keep a big seller like that off the shelves forever."
Comments conceal
Kenneth Winfrey
December 16 2005, 12:47PM
It's true. The media and politics are littered with temporary causes and the "wars" they represent. Yet, the real causes like education/literacy, poverty, healthcare, environmental conservation, and human rights remain largely ignored. The New Testament suggests a man who would have probably been much more concerned with all of those issues, than whether or not we celebrate his birth and/or the Winter Solstice--because we now know that if/when Jesus was actually born, it wasn't in December.
This is just more of the same politics that reinforces the artificial ethnocentric garbage so many people claim to be American "religion" and "culture."
alicia banks
December 16 2005, 1:37PM
these paranoid bigoted delusional neocon bastards make scrooge look like mother theresa...
they are pathological liars who thrive on mythical
issues and moronic sound bytes
i will continue to ignore them...
happy holidays
ab
trey-boy
December 16 2005, 2:22PM
Damn Keith.....tell us how you really feel. Christians seem to have more power and influence over you than you are letting all of to believe if you let them get you that upset. They got every right to speak up just as the liberals, you've got to take a lot of this stuff with a grain of salt. I'm a Black Man before I'm a gay man so to hell with what you or the conservatives are feuding about. I've got to fight just to earn a living and racial stereotyping from Mr. Charlie. Get a grip and stop being so hateful and then saying that it ain't so. You need to deal with that pent-up anger and bitterness. It'll be fine bro...lol
Andrew in Seattle
December 16 2005, 3:55PM
You go, Keith! I'm as sick as you are of watching our constitutional democracy devolved by theocratic tyrrany.
Happy Soltiramahannkwanzamas
cmoney
December 16 2005, 7:54PM
Coming in 2006: "The Invasion of the Illegal Immigrants!" A GOP production, just in time for the Mid-term elections!.
Everett
December 17 2005, 2:15PM
I'm a little suprised that anyone who would read an entry on this site would dismiss Keith as being angry, hateful, and bitter without conceding that what "normal" America is engendering a fight over something that really does not exist. Nobody wants to take the "Christ" out of Christmas or the "holy" out of the holidays. If you think about it, trying to be more inclusive of other people during the "holidays" is what the time of year is all about--no matter what holiday you celebrate. In that vein, the right-wing shows it's insensitivity, if not disdain, towards anything that is not like the right-wing. At a time when togetherness is so important, they want to ostracize people simply because those other people don't celebrate Christmas. How un-Christlike!! Keith's point about them engendering and creating fear is exactly on point. Christ was never concerned about someone overshadowing or overpowering him. In the face of certain death, he told Pontius Pilate as much. Christians should be the same way. As long as the right wing stirs up this type of strife, Keith should continue to point it out and educate those of us who are not adept at seeing it. And, if he comes off a little angry, that's OK. I appreciate his passion for the issue. His voice is important. And, if you are a black, gay man OR a gay, black man, you ought to be even more thankful that someone out there sees and voices what is going on. Thanks, Keith.
Laura
December 18 2005, 3:41AM
"I'm a Black Man before I'm a gay man so to hell with what you or the conservatives are feuding about. I've got to fight just to earn a living and racial stereotyping from Mr. Charlie. Get a grip and stop being so hateful and then saying that it ain't so. You need to deal with that pent-up anger and bitterness"
are you sure that was meant for keith?
because it sounds like you're talking to yourself.
"I'm a Black Man before I'm a gay man so to hell with what you or the conservatives are feuding about."
lol some of us do not feel the need to prove anything about either identity, but you go ahead and knock yourself out.
there is no "war on christmas", you're the one who needs to get a grip.
Greling Jackson
December 18 2005, 5:47PM
It's about time I heard something sane on this matter. Thank you, Mr. Boykin! I was almost beginning to feel that I was the only one who saw through all the neo-con hype. :)
Regan DuCasse
December 18 2005, 6:22PM
Christmas night and the first night of Hanukkah are together this year.
I think God is trying to tell us something.
Happy holidays is more appropriate than just Merry Christmas.
And at least seculars, most of them are not so vain as to say they know THE TRUTH and are so certain about what God thinks, said or wants.
If not for seculars...I think we'd still be afraid of eclipses and would believe the world was flat.
April
December 18 2005, 11:52PM
I spent the 90s in public school where we had winter socials and winter break instead of Christmas parties and Christmas Break. Where I have worked, my employers asked to us say happy holidays instead of merry Christmas. I was also taught to respect other people's beliefs as well as never to assume someone is a certain way... that includes what religion someone connects themselves to.
And besides, didn't Christians steal the date for Christmas from the Pagans? Anyone who has spent 5 mins. in a western civilization history class knows that a group of men came together and worked out the specifics of Christianity as a religion including moving the birth of Christ to the date of the Winter Solstice to keep the people from being persecuted for their beliefs. The Christian movement was (and still is) a great and powerful thing when you look at the spiritual ideas and teachings of Jesus and his believers. Once man tried to organize it and use it to his political advantage, well, it all went to hell. (Another 10 mins. in that same class will show you the same thing happened to Islam and other religions by the way.)
Basically, Christianity (and religion in general) has always been used as a tool by politicians. What better way to get people on your side than to get them pissed of at your opponent with something as ridiculous as saying merry Christmas versus happy holidays? Bah. It's petty and it's vile of them. The only thing worse is the sheep that follow people like O'Reilly without thinking for themselves. Seek for the answers yourself. Never let anyone tell you how things should or shouldn't be.
"Stay away from a foolish man, for you will not find knowledge on his lips."- Proverb 14:7
Web Administrator
December 19 2005, 9:51AM
Yusef, your comment was too long and has been moved to the message board.
http://www.keithboykin.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=901#901
yusef
December 19 2005, 1:14PM
The Encyclopaedia Britannica reports that "The traditional customs connected with Christmas have developed from several sources as a result of the coincidence of the celebration of the birth of Christ with the pagan agricultural and solar observations at midwinter. In the Roman world the Saturnalia (December 17) was a time of merrymaking and exchange of gifts. December 25 was also regarded as the birth date of the Iranian mystery god Mithra, the Sun of Righteousness."
Colliers Encyclopedia agrees. Quote: "After the triumph of Constantine, the church at Rome assigned December 25 as the date for the celebration of the feast, possibly about A.D. 320 or 353. By the end of the fourth century the whole Christian world was celebrating Christmas on that day, with the exception of the Eastern churches, where it was celebrated on January 6. The choice of December 25 was probably influenced by the fact that on this day the Romans celebrated the Mithraic feast of the Sun-god (natalis solis invicti), and that the Saturnalia also came at this time."
Both encyclopedias plainly reveal that the source of the celebration of December 25 is the birthday of Mithra, the pagan sun god.
Sun worshippers since the time of Babel recognized this time of year in honor of their gods.
1st century believers, taught personally by Christ, did not celebrate His birthday. 2nd century theologians condemned the thought. Only after severe persecution, destruction and inaccessibility of biblical scripture and the blending of pagan doctrine with the worship of God was the Mithraic celebration of December 25th proclaimed to be "Christian" in nature.
These facts are well documented. They can be found in any encyclopedia. There is no way to "Christianize" the birthday of the sun god. Anyone with access to an encyclopedia can know better and those with theological degrees do!
Laura
December 20 2005, 3:01AM
Regan said, "I think God is trying to tell us something."
I don't think god really gives a shit lol
Laura
December 20 2005, 3:06AM
"Yusef, your comment was too long and has been moved to the message board.
http://www.keithboykin.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=901#901"
Web Admin, can you do something about the spamming of the comments?
lanny
December 20 2005, 8:47PM
hello Keith and all.. well i feel theyre trying to crucify our Christ again. i have refused to say happy holidays, and continue to say merry christmas and seasons greetings to my friends and acquaintances. sorry if i offend anyone but im sick of this politicizing of religious beliefs!
Laura
December 21 2005, 2:40AM
lanny said,
"sorry if i offend anyone but im sick of this politicizing of religious beliefs!:
then christians should stop politicizing their religious beliefs. not everybody is christian, and contrary to what you've been told your religion is not superior. it's actually pretty f'n obnoxious, bloody, gory, and morose.
United States christians, the majority religion in the world's most powerful country, seriously need to get a grip. martyrdom ended some time in 250 AD, it's now 2005, get yourselves together, you look sloppy and foolish.
if your jesus is so offended by two words "happy holidays" in succession then screw him and that manger he rode in on.
Web Administrator
December 22 2005, 1:38PM
"Web Admin, can you do something about the spamming of the comments?"
Posted by Laura at December 20, 2005 03:06 AM
Laura,
It is a big problem. We delete about 100 comments a week from spam but we miss a lot of them that are posted on articles dating way back. We will try to keep up. If you see something, let us know. Thanks.
Laura
December 23 2005, 2:12AM
"Both encyclopedias plainly reveal that the source of the celebration of December 25 is the birthday of Mithra, the pagan sun god."
yeah, and he's from Persia and India, anyway.
http://www.farvardyn.com/mithras.php
Tygar
December 24 2005, 10:43AM
Thank you for your comment Yusef. You are absolutely right, Christmas, as celebrated today, has its roots in pagan worship. Yet, people still celebrate it because "everyone else does." That definately does not make it right. . I applaud your efforts to expose the hypocrisy of Christendom. Christ never told his followers to celebrate his birthdate, hence, the exact date is not provided in the Bible. What is provided is the date of his death, Nisan 14, and that is what he told the Apostles to "keep doing this in rememberance of me." The current holiday season belongs to MERCHANTS, not common people.