Conservatives Take The Merry Out Of Christmas

Iowa's theocracy crusader Rep. Steve King(R) and other self-proclaimed protectors of the faith are out in force this year, doing all they can to making sure that no one is going to enjoy the Holiday Season.

King managed to get a theocratic propaganda piece disguised as a resolution celebrating Christmas put up for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives... and the so called news is that Jim McDermott voted NO. Never mind that Kings resolution crosses the line into promoting a religion in violation of the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution... All but 9 members of the House voted Yes, because King's resolution was a "gotcha" trick intended only to further rightwing political aims. For King and his ilk, Christianity is merely a vehicle for their authoritarian political goals.

With a huge majority of Americans being Christians of one sort or another, only a mental defective could believe that Christians are a persecuted minority and yet decrying "the War on Christmas" and other fantasies of Christian victimhood is a thriving industry.

What 'War on Christmas'?
By Ruth Marcus - Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page A21

I've been hearing about this "War on Christmas," so I headed to the Heritage Foundation the other day for a briefing from one of the defending army's generals: Fox News anchor John Gibson, author of "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." Gibson -- and Bill O'Reilly, his comrade in the Fox-hole -- see this as a two-front war: Assaulting Christmas from the government end, they say, are pusillanimous school principals, politically corrected city managers and their ilk, bullied by the ACLU types into extirpating any trace of Christmas from the public square. Battering the holiday from the private sector are infidel retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart, which balk at using the C-word in their advertising in favor of such secularist slogans as "Happy Holidays."

The assault, Gibson told the Heritage crowd, has reached a "shocking level this year."

After the lecture, I wandered over to Union Station to check out a retail battlefield. Inside and out, the station was festooned with giant You Know What wreaths. A huge You Know What tree, with presents wrapped in red and green underneath, stood in the main hall, near a placard announcing "Norwegian Christmas at Union Station." A high-tech player piano was playing "Go Tell It on the Mountain," proclaiming the birth of You Know Who; the next selection was You Know Who Else Is Coming to Town. The most generic element was a small sign reading "Happy Holidays," but even then the words were bracketed by reindeer -- and let's just say, they weren't eating latkes. It was beginning to look a lot like You Know What. ...(more)

Local rightwing talk radio station KGMI even got in on the faux victimhood act the other day when morning co-host Patti Brooks wrote, on the station website, a declaration of her intention to wish people a Merry Christmas. She announces that, "I never have, nor will I ever be politically correct...".

I suppose the shut-ins who listen to KGMI and read it's website will be comforted in the knowledge that Patti will be out there bravely wishing people 'Merry Christmas' in the face of no one really caring whether she says that or 'Happy Holidays' or 'Seasons Greetings' or just keeps her mouth shut.