In a sense, of course, there’s no better time to be a Christian than the first 25 days of December. But this is also the season when American Christians can feel most embattled. Their piety is overshadowed by materialist ticky-tack. Their great feast is compromised by Christmukkwanzaa multiculturalism. And the once-a-year churchgoers crowding the pews beside them are a reminder of how many Americans regard religion as just another form of midwinter entertainment, wedged in between “The Nutcracker†and “Miracle on 34th Street.â€
Oh, boo hoo. Listen, Christians, you can’t have it both ways — you can’t whine incessantly about your holy day being contaminated by consumerism and then insist that your holy day be celebrated by consumerism. You can’t complain that other traditions are horning in on the pristine observation of Christmas and then browbeat non-Christians into observing Christmas.
And the idea that “Christmukkwanzaa multiculturalism” is stopping Christians from observing Christmas any way they like makes as much sense as the argument that allowing gay people to marry will destroy the marriages of “straight” people.
This weekend on some panel discussion, Nina Totenberg said, “I was at — forgive the expression — a Christmas party.†Now, I don’t know why she said that, and I don’t much care. I assume that somebody with the name “Totenberg” is Jewish, and maybe she feels a little uncomfortable attending any social event with the label “Christmas.” But the way the right blogosphere reacted, you’d think Totenberg had admitted that she personally had crucified Jesus.
See also Hot Air, Mediaite, Sister Toldjah, Fausta’s Blog, Scared Monkeys, Althouse, American Glob, Don Surber, Creative Minority Report, The Right Scoop, Pat Dollard, The Gateway Pundit and theblogprof.
These are not the complaints of an “embattled” people. These are the complaints of people who believe they are owed deference and aren’t getting it. It’s something like segregationist whites who expected people of color to step off the sidewalk as they approached.
I’ve said in the past that when people like Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly who can’t even fake religiosity well complain about others’ lack of faith, they’re really complaining about disrespect of tribal totems.
Nobody is stopping Christians from observing Christmas as a deeply holy day. They just have to do it. But they need to understand that they can’t expect everyone to take part in a big, gaudy, commercial pig-out festival and then complain if non-Christians observe the holiday solely as a big, gaudy, commercial pig-out festival.
If they want Christ put back into Christmas, then they should keep Christmas confined to Christianity.
The other solution is to completely divorce Christmas from the big, gaudy, commercial pig-out festival. Restore Christmas to what it was to Christians of centuries ago, with church services and a banquet, but no shopping, no presents, no Santa Claus.
And if you want to celebrate the big, splashy, commercial gift-giving festival, you can do that, too. Just don’t mix them up. We could even call the secular festival “Yule,” a name taken from a pagan winter celebration.
Don’t make any assumptions about my religious views sweetie, I didn’t choose the name Aleister by accident.
Christians aren’t the only ones who find the left’s smug political correctness offensive.
‘
I assume you have a point, but I have no idea what it is.
Totenberg’s discomfort with “Christmas” may come from her Jewishness, not her “smug political correctness,” although I don’t know her personally and have no idea whee her head is. FYI, we liberals don’t really consider Totenberg to be one of “ours.” Also FYI, lots of liberals are Christians. And what you are perpetrating here is “conservative political correctness,” which is not so much smug as it is nasty.
Several years ago, I worked with a guy who was pretty extreme about this stuff.
During the “holiday season”, I would be constantly lectured about the corruption of the Pagan winter celibration into our national / Pagan / money woshiping spend fest, which is somehow dissing Christ.
We truly can’t have it both ways.
Most of us know that the financial barometer is how much money people spend at Christmas, especially since the covert and overt advertising now starts the day after Holloween.
I was at J.C. Penny on Sunday where a Santa dressed in desert cammo and holding an American flag was on sale ( YIKES, That’s a real war on Christmas!).AS DR Smith on “Lost In Space” would say, Oh, the pain!”
I’m holding out for the RPG Jesus on Easter Sunday, which is, BTW, a corruption of the Pagan fertility celibration, with all them chicks and bunnies and eggs….
There are so many religions that celebrate the Solstice in one way or another that it seems strange that any single one would try to claim exclusivity. Or maybe not, all things considered.
And a footnote: Yule is the celebration of the rebirth of the Sun, who is also the Son. Common threads.
Move out from my path you heathens, barbarians, and worshippers of false idols, for I am Uber-Christian.
I worship my “God of Peace,” and I will smite you a mighty smote if you get in the way of me and my spirit of giving. I’ve killed for something as grand and God-like as a 60 inch plasma HDTV, and as little as the last “Cabbage Patch Kid” at the Kay Bee Toy store 5 towns away (K-B stands for I will “K”ill you “B”astards if you grab the last of any item I need or want). I will run your sorry heathen, Jewish, and especially Muslim and Kwanzaite asses over when the doors at my WalMart open on “Black Friday” morn, which needs to be rechristenend (get it?) ‘White Friday’ to end any confusion as to who has first dibs on whatever gift I want to gift in my grand and glorious spirit of giving (usually given to someone to shut them the Hell up).
And don’t tell me that everything from the date to the tree to Santa are all Pagan. If Christ didn’t want it to be the way it is, he’d come down and change it – and when HE eventually does come down, then will YOUR heathen ass be sorry!
And also stop commercializing MY Christian Christmas! I don’t want to hear the “Frosty the Snowman” tune everywhere I shop right after Labor Day. After Holloween is just fine. You have to stop commercializing my most holy of Holy Days. Well, ok, keep the sales. And can you extend the hours even more? I mean some of these stores have the audacity to shut down for a few hours after midnight. And as for 12 days, I think Christmas needs a whole month. And add some stuff in the new song there that real people would want, besides some stupid birds only the English have ever heard of (I mean, what the hell is a turtle-dove? Is it peaceful turtle, or a slow dove?). Have like 18 Lexus’s with giant bows, 17 Handicapped Parking Passes, 16 emptly Handicapped Parking Spaces, 15 turkeys basting, and, OK, you can keep some royal stuff, but Americanize it like Jesus would want – like 14 antique Princess phones, and 13 Duke’s jumping for a rebound. See? Like that!
Oh, and Mr. Mayor, if I don’t see a $#@&ing manger in the town square, with a little baby, his Baby Momma, a First Dude, and 3 Wise Guy’s, and NO stars with more than 5 points, your infidel ass is heathen grass come the next election.
Merry Christmas to every Christian!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! The rest of you heathen assholes can all go burn in Hell!
“And a paaaartriiiiidge in a pear sauce…”
Aleister,
Have a very merry Thelemite solstice.
Christmukkwanzaa
Oh, that’s not ugly at all.
I assume you have a point, but I have no idea what it is.
I believe that person, who could give master classes in smugness, is self-named after the perilously addled Great Beast Crowley. “Me hate EVERYTHING!” is such a cool philosophy, after all.
Excellent post Maha, I.really like your point about the culture whining and them wanting it both ways. Your right they need to choose: low key religous holiday taken seriously by the faithful, or full Blown commercial fiasco to be exploited and sometimes ridiculed by all! Personally I’d hope they choose option one and leave me the hell out of it.
Sometimes the old ways are best. Let’s revert the holiday to what it was originally based on, saturnalia! Who’s with me?
charles,
I’m in!
Who’s bringing the Christmas Crisco? Uhm, ‘Saturnalia Sloppy Seconds Sauce.’ Ooooh, I hope that doesn’t offend Aleister, our new resident Crowley-ite, Thelemite acolyte. Or anyone else, for that matter…
OK, Sorry!
Time for me to shut up, put on my dunce cap, and sit in the corner for awhile…
Real christians celebrate easter/spring equinox. Much more important than Saturnalia.
Christmas is as artificial a religious holiday as you are apt to find. Most adults know about Saturnalia. What gets overlooked is that Jesus was not born in December. According to the Gospel accounts, he actually would have been born sometime in the spring, when shepherds used to abide in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. Early Christians minimized or ignored Christmas. Now, the churches with the most ancient traditions (Orthodox, Coptic) tend to celebrate the holiday as a cultural accomodation to living in countries that give end-of-year sales a spiritual overtone.
Cundgulag,
The dunce cap is only required when your posts are deemed irrelevent and start disappearing, so you should be good to go for now. BTW I loved your first post, funny stuff, ridicule and snark it makes the world go round!
The true god of Christmas is Santa. What’s more, he’s a temporary god; one which you are _supposed_ to outgrow. Each of Santa’s worshippers personally experiences the mini-Enlightenment of Santa’s disappearance. He is debunked so that we may doubt. Santa Claus is a ritual initiation into skepticism.
Oh, poor Ross! It’s hard out there for a professional Christian.
The nut graph of Douthat’s lament (I’d call it more of a whinge) is this: “believing Christians are no longer what they once were — an overwhelming majority in a self-consciously Christian nation.”
Yep! You can either get used to it and go on privately practicing the faith you claim is sincere – and the Bible is very clear that it’s supposed to be private: “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6)
Or you can keep bleating that you’re not getting enough pats on the back for your heroic piety in the face of other people’s lack of interest. I actually laughed at him citing the syncretism of the Roman Empire as an ideal to emulate – a lot of those belief systems receded in importance or died out completely (nobody worships Jupiter or Neptune anymore). Why should Christianity be exempt?
I’d be fine with creating a parallel pagan festival for those of us who enjoy the eating, drinking and making merry elements of Christmas, but it’s unlikely to make any of the War on Christmas martyrs shut up.
Amen…oops, I mean YEAH, RIGHT ON! I increasingly see two very distinct forms of Christianity. One that takes the red parts to heart and another that is a vehicle for tribal solidarity which somehow navigates around the numerous references to charity in the bible.
I just came from serving at a soup kitchen at a local church. I didn’t hear a single bit of proselytizing but witnessed numerous acts of humanity and goodwill — people bringing food and clothing, people sharing a meal with the downtrodden…taking down names, phone numbers and a list of skills so that if a job came up contact could be made. …no marketing, just good, selfless acts.
I’m not saying this makes me better than the next person but it made me better.
BTW Aleister while I can’t really abide by the notion that anyone made an assumption about you I would ask (after all you brought it up) which school of Christianity you hail from. I assume nothing because I’ve seen both schools.
According to the conservative media, liberals are to blame for everything. If a meteor struck the earth, it would be because of liberals.
Thus, Rush Limbaugh has to blame liberals for ruining Christmas through crass commercialism. Immediately after he says that, he does a commercial: “This Christmas, why not surprise your loved ones with a gift card for …”
Douthat is deeply offensive. If he dropped the “N” word or the “F” word in a future column I wouldn’t be shocked.
Baby Bobo is trying to be like his hero David “Bobo” Brooks. But he’s not as good a writer, or thinker. And that’s a pretty low bar to begin with.
A common sight in my suburban neighborhood is a yard sign reading “Keep Christ in Christmas” surrounded by inflatable Santas, light up reindeer, giant plastic candy canes and snowmen.
It isn’t the non-believers who corrupt the holiday it is the consumerism of the Christians themselves.
I have read that the Massachusetts Colony and the Puritans in England outlawed Christmas as witchcraft, they said that Scripture was clearly saying that Christmas had pagan roots. In addition they were unanimous in saying that 25th December was not the birthday of Jesus. I wonder why, after all the progress that has been made, the religious Christians have not been able to figure out when was Jesus really born and celebrate his birthday then. If they did, then Christmas could be changed to Yul or something else and be celebrated like it was for thousands of years, and not as it has been for the last few hundred years after being taken over by the various churches.
Yes, let’s see Jesus’ birth certificate! Maybe he was born in Kenya!
Seriously, there’s no way to know, but ASSUMING the account in the Gospel of Luke is correct, about the shepherds in the fields, it was probably spring lambing season. However, if other parts of the gospels are correct, he was born no later than 4 BCE. Herod the Great allegedly ordered the slaughter of newborn babies to prevent the King of the Jews from taking his throne, which was why Joseph and Mary went to Egypt for a while. But Herod the Great died in 4 BCE.
The gospels also say that Augustus Caesar ordered “all the world to be taxed,” which possibly referred to an empire-wide census, which is why Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem for Jesus’ birth. But there is no record Augustus ordered a census in the year 1. There were, however, empire-wide censuses in 28 BCE, 8 BCE, and 14 CE.
So, basically, no one knows for sure what year the guy was born, never mind the month and day.
And maybe the newly opened and accredited John The Baptist University in Jerusalem had a college creative writing course on Messiah-ing. And the 12 students were told to write about the miracles of a fictitious saviour character named Jesus over their Hanukkah break. It was assigned as a collaborative effort , but each student had to write his own chapter. A 13th student, Judas, had just dropped-out due to financial issues, and since he wasn’t around to defend himself, the others made fun of him and made him the bad guy as part of the narrative. I don’t know where Mary Magdalene fits in my narrative, but she might have been a female fellow student in an enlightened co-ed school, or maybe a gal all of the other male students had the hots for.
Extra crdit was given for giving Jesus’ girlfriend the same first name as his mother. Freud couldn’t have done a better job of messing a young man up. But no credit was given to the students for pulling the old “Virgin Birth” trope out. It was old hat even then, been there – done that, and no one would believe it anyway, would they?