Today's issue of Salon carries a nice historical dissection by Michelle Goldberg of the anti-Christmas hysteria our poor persecuted evangelicals dutifully drag out every year like beat-up yuletide lawn ornaments. Reading it will make you feel a bit like never saying "Merry Christmas" to a stranger again, lest they think you're part of this deranged campaign.
This year, the Christanists have their knickers in a twist over department stores wishing shoppers "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." Fatuous blimp Jerry Falwell is calling for a boycott of Target this weekend because he claims they refuse to allow the phrase "Merry Christmas" in its advertising and promotion.
Meanwhile, Fox News has made the "War On Christmas" its pet cause, scanning the globe for nativity scene controversies and sending a helmet-haired blonde in stilletto heels out on location to every last hamlet where Plastic Baby Jesus faces real or imagined peril.
The veracity of these anti-Christmas claims matters not to those whose religious convictions apparently become meaningless without a phony sense of embattlement. Their hue and cry has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with being able to mail out urgent appeals for cash in envelopes marked "Christmas Under Attack!"
Monday, November 21, 2005
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Amazing. Last year Wal-Mart was the target of a boycott by the anti-"Happy Holidays" crowd. It enjoyed a fairly healthy amount of publicity in a slow news season. The Wal-Mart brass, as sympathetic as any company would probably be to their politics, met with the boycotters and basically told them: "Wal-Mart is going to say whatever Wal-Mart wants.(I would assume that they would refer to themselves in the third person like Ricky Henderson does.) And Wal-Mart wants to say 'Happy Holidays', exclusively. So get over it, losers." The boycotters did the only thing they could do - they gave up. I guess that I missed the part in the story of Christmas about the ritual beating of dead horses. It must be right next to the passage about blaming the poor for being so poor. -JC
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