First it was the Puritans, who considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America when they founded some of the first settlements in the U.S...
They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681 Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way" a crime.
Then it was TARGET department stores, which refuse to use the word "Christmas" in their in-store promotions and advertising. Instead, this pagan retail chain uses the anti-Christian cop-out slogan "Happy Holidays" - that's "holidayS", plural, as if there's more than one.
Hey Target! Buy a history book! America was founded by Christians! Those Christians being the above-mentioned Puritans, who may have gotten a little confused about the proper place of Christmas, what with trying to outlaw it and everything. But they can be forgiven, since they DID convert and then eradicate the Savages in the name of the one true Lord. Have YOU ever converted and/or eradicated anyone in the name of the one true Lord, Target? Didn't think so.
YOU don't get the benefit of the doubt, Target!
Anyway, America was founded by Christians, for Christians. And this time of year, Target, Christian-Americans celebrate ONE "holiday" - Christmas. And technically Christmas Eve and also Thanksgiving and New Year's, but still, Christmas is the main one.
"Christmas", Target, is singular. Don't forget it!
Next, war on Christmas and Christians was declared by SEARS when, in its annual "seasonal" (translated to American, that means "Christmastime") sales catalogue, it called its Christmas trees "Wishes Come True Trees."
Hey, Sears, what gives? Why do you think wishes come true? Because of Christmas, that's why.
If Roebuck were still around, he'd never have let this happen.
In a particularly emotional blow to Christmas-celebrators everywhere in America, that quintessentially American company COCA-COLA callously decided to remove Santa Claus from its cans this holiday season - I mean Christmas season. This is the first time Santa has been evicted from the Coke can in 74 years, replaced by polar bears.
Think about that for a second - Santa replaced by polar bears! Where else have you seen polar bears in recent months? Only a little TV show called "LOST" - you know, "lost" as in the opposite of "born again". Connect the dots, people!
Christmas is not about pagan bears, Coke! It's about Santa Claus lying in a manger in Bethlehem! This Christmas season, I'll be remembering that age-old axiom "WWSCD - What Would Santa Claus Do", and enjoying a delicious Jack & PEPSI, thank you very much.
And finally, we come to perhaps the most disturbing attack on Christmas in recent memory. This year, the Gregorian and Hebrew calendars have conspired to steal Christmas's thunder and caused Christmas day and the first day of Hanukkah both to fall on Dec. 25!
Do you think it was an accident that the 25th day of Kislev on the Hebrew Calendar fell on the 25th day of December on the Gregorian calendar in this very year, the year of our Lord 2005, when the battle against Christmas by the non-Christians is reaching its crescendo? If you do, then you need to crawl out of your cold-weather cocoons, ladies and gentlemen, and smell the heathen.
This "coincidence" should alarm you for a couple of reasons. First, the co-celebration serves to steal a portion of Christmas's thunder by siphoning off 2% or 3% of the U.S. population that is Jewish and causing them to celebrate something other than Christmas instead of not celebrating anything at all. There's only so much festive joy to go around.
Next, it provides the secularist, anti-Christmas crowd (like the Bush White House with it's "Holiday" card and Fox News merchandising with its "Holiday" ornaments and the big evangelical churches that are shutting down on Christmas day) fodder for its anti-Christmas cannons. "We're not against Christmas just because we say Happy Holidays," they'll say. "It's just that, this year, there are actually 2 `holy' days ON (as opposed to AROUND) December 25, and we don't want to leave anyone out."
Look, inclusion is a good thing, as is inclusiveness and acceptance and tolerance and respect for other cultures, but let's face facts, here - Christmas came FIRST. Well, not the actual birth of Christ - I guess Hanukkah preceded that, but the CELEBRATION of Christmas came FIRST. Well, not overall, but in America, the celebration of Christmas came FIRST. Well, not counting the facts that Jewish settlers first arrived in America in 1654 and that the celebration of Christmas didn't catch on until the early 1800s.
Ummm, anyway ... Christmas just seems more normal, doesn't it? And people shouldn't discriminate against Christmas.
cross-posted at my site