Wes Clark sent out a holiday email to his WesPAC list today, subject line
Happy holidays! (Take that, right-wing fanatics!) But the body of the letter showed what the theocrats are missing in this whole trumped-up "war"...
Consider how the letter opens:
Dear David,
I'm just wrapping up some last minute work here in Little Rock before Gert and I catch a flight to Los Angeles. But before heading out, we wanted to take a moment to send you our best holiday wishes.
Gert and I are really looking forward to spending a few days in Los Angeles with our son, Wes, our daughter-in-law, Astrid, and our two grandsons, Wes and Dashiell, to celebrate Christmas. It's a very special time of the year for our family, as it is for millions of Americans.
I hope that in the midst of this very busy time of year, with everything we all have going on in our personal and professional lives -- as well as the many challenges facing our nation -- that you are able to take some time to appreciate the joy and peace of this special holiday season.
If you analyze the language a bit, you see just how it manages to affirm the Clark family's own celebration of Christmas while avoiding any assumptions about whether the recipient celebrates it as well. "Holidays" is in fact the inclusive term for what everyone in our culture observes at this time of year: days that are sacred within both a religious and a secular frame of reference.
Wes Clark is, of course, an inclusive kind of guy. Bill O'Reilly and his ilk are not. Wes Clark, unlike Bill O'Reilly, has been in a real war and therefore knows that the word "war" is not one to throw around loosely to smear anyone who disagrees with you.
"Christmas", in the American context, used to be defined widely enough to include both theological Christians and cultural Christians. Just as nonbelieving Jews generally celebrate the Jewish holidays because they are central to Jewish self-definition, millions of nonbelieving Americans of Christian descent have felt comfortable celebrating Christmas as a cultural holiday. The religious and political right is actually trying to put a stop to that, it would appear, by twisting "Merry Christmas" into an implicit doctrinal statement. But it's part and parcel with their unyielding Calvinism.
Maybe we should all go on a couple days of "by the book" social action to make a point. Let's not say "Happy Holidays". Let's not say "Merry Christmas". Let's say, to everyone at every cash register, bank teller's window, restaurant counter: "Happy Birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ of Nazareth". In those precise words. If they look puzzled, say "We're not supposed to say 'Happy Holidays' any more, are we?" Y'all want religion, y'all are gonna get religion.
A couple years of that would be enough to quiet down the nonsense.