A Review of John Gibson's The War on Christmas (ISBN 1-59523-016-5)
The idea that sinister elements outside the mainstream of the American Heartland are plotting to "take the Christ out of Christmas" is not an original or a new one. It has a clear pedigree, one deeply grounded in old-time prejudices and bigotry.
The idea of a "war on Christmas" goes back to at least
85 years ago, to the time when Republican Warren G. Harding won the Presidency.
The first recorded accusation dates to 1920, when the well-known automaker Henry Ford claimed in The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem (ISBN 0766178293) that "most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated Someone's Birth." Ford stated that the alleged de-Christianization was a secret plot of the Jewish designers of Christmas cards. Ford also claimed "Christmas celebrations or carols in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Paul and New York met with strong Jewish opposition."
By the end of the 1950s, this sort of patent anti-Semitism had become generally unacceptable, so organizations like the John Birch Society turned Ford's crusade into a campaign against "Reds," and of course the UN. Those UNICEF Christmas cards, ostensibly sold to benefit refugee children, were clearly a ploy designed to undermine Christmas.
In 1959, the John Birch Society published a pamphlet titled "There Goes Christmas?!" claiming Communists along with the United Nations were behind an plot to secularize Christmas. Writer Hubert Kregeloh alleged "One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas -- to denude the event of its religious meaning...They are already busy...on efforts to poison the 1959 Christmas season with their high-pressure propaganda. What they now want to put over on the American people is simply this: Department stores throughout the country are to utilize UN symbols and emblems as Christmas decorations." The pamplet rallied Americans against UN promotion to "fight back by informing department stores that those with improper ornamentation wouldn't be getting their business."
John Gibson's The War on Christmas has an account of what were perceived as anti-Christmas moves in Maplewood, NJ, and the pro-Christmas crusade by two families living there.
The Fabbo and Uhlman families, both Christian, have the feeling that an anti-Christian air has crept into the town, and they don't know whether to blame the Jewish families who seem to resent Christian or Christmas symbols on display, or other Christian families, who seem to have taken the attitude that their fellow Christians are too numerous, too overbearing culturally, and that the solution is for Christians to take a back seat for a while.
Fabbo stewed over the situation. "There's no word that we have that says you're anti-Christian. You know you can be called a racist. You can be called an anti-Semite. Those words all have power. There's no word that we use that has power about this." pp. 120-121
One big Fabbo family issue was that the local public schools in Maplewood allegedly preferred that "certain holiday parties" should be non-religious and non-denominational, using only white paper plates, or plates with snowflake designs. In defiance, the Fabbo family brought the kids Christmas candy canes and chocolate Hanukah gelt. It does not seem that anyone actually tried to hinder this, however.
Gibson's work is far from what we might call a literary masterpiece. Does air "creep," even metaphorically? "They don't know whether to blame..." implies that there are indeed people who must be blamed. And "to take a back seat for a while" implies that after "a while" you can get back in the driver's seat and that will be okay then.
Some of our fellow-citizens are now wearing mass-produced pro-Xmas bracelets ($2.00 apiece), to show where they stand.
It's not clear whether they plan to go on wearing these bracelets throughout 2006, however.
Gibson's examples are at the local level--culled from places like Maplewood, Mustang OK, Plano TX, and Covington GA. The main "city" dealt with is Indianapolis, where a public Christmas tree may have been removed. It may be that in his book Gibson stays clear of really big cities like NYC, because his viewers and readers think places like that are so brazenly godless, with traditional Christmas observances so openly flouted, that they don't stand a chance anyway.
Even Santa Could Get Mugged in the Big City
Gibson's book came out back on October 20, and for the two months since then, his Fox employers have led an active campaign against the War on Christmas. Cynics would, and did, say that this was really a campaign to sell the book and raise Fox ratings--but what do they know, anyway?
President Bush and VP Cheney have joined in the pro-Xmas campaign, and their followers have begun wearing gear that reflects their support of their leaders in this effort.
Bush and Cheney Admirers Defend Santa and Their Leaders in Their Own Special Ways
But the White House "Holiday Cards" have unfortunately sent a mixed message.
Laura and the Grinch
And, to make things worse, the RNC people screwed up by using the H-word too, and they even dropped the colored balls.
PS: I had originally planned to contrast Gibson's book with
How the Republicans Stole Christmas (ISBN 0-385-51605-3) by Bill Press--
But after I bought both books, I found that there's little or no actual mention of Christmas issues in the Press book. It came out on October 11, before the Gibson book, so it's not clear why the Christmas-focused title was chosen.
Instead, the Press book is a very persuasive study of how Republicans self-righteously try to maintain a monopoly on superficial religious issues. Press himself is a devout Catholic, who studied in seminaries for ten years before finally making the decision to lead a secular life.
Press makes a good case in favor of a need for sincerely religious Democrats, such as John Edwards, to show how the Christian teachings they follow can be applied to help the poor, to free the oppressed, and to care for all the people in our country with true charity.
The Press book is well worth reading, but a Christmas book it's not.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS, KOS PEOPLE EVERYWHERE!