Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Return of the War on Christmas


Image from source, Huffington Post

Oy vey. It's back. The mythical War on Christmas. The perennial fake outrage from Bill O'Reilly and the rest of FOX "News." Of all of the right's faux outrages, this one is among the lamest.

Christmas decorations start appearing in stores in August. From Halloween on, we are inundated with the holiday, with carols playing over the loudspeakers at Sam's Club, to lame commercials. I like Christmas, and though no longer a practicing Christian, I'm as consumery as anybody. But it is easy to see how people (particularly those who do not celebrate the holiday) can grow weary of it.

But I've really got to say, I haven't heard a lot of whining from them. It's part of American life, it just is. Still, people (egged on by conservatives) have started taking offense of phrases like "Happy Holidays" and "Seasons' Greetings." Now, I don't believe for a second that anyone using those phrases does so with malice.

It's an easy way of saying "have a happy holiday season." It includes Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa, Christmas, New Year's Eve, and probably several others I'm forgetting. It is truly a holiday season, and it is absurd to instead say "Merry Christmas" to everybody, for two months. Christmas is one day. Just my two cents.

[Excerpt]


You know, as I walked up into the CVS across the street from my apartment a few days ago and saw the store festooned with Christmas decorations, I had two thoughts. First, I thought, "November 3rd! That's not so bad, actually!" And indeed, it wasn't: in previous years, area stores had their Christmas decor up before Halloween. But then I had another realization: namely, that the coming of the Christmas decorations brought an ill Yuletide wind along with it - the annual mindfrack that is Bill O'Reilly's War On Christmas. . .

Read more at: Huffington Post

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