What is the latest indignity that has the religious right frothing at the mouth? Is it the persistence of wide-spread poverty in this richest nation in the world? Is it the number of American children who go to bed hungry every night? Is the number of third-world children who die of hunger every day? Is it the ongoing human toll due to war and genocide and terrorism? No. It’s the red, holiday, coffee cup from Starbucks.
How are rational people, sane beings, supposed to respond to crazy on this level? Is it even conceivable that the feeblest of constraints on a dominant and ingrained social institution, constraints put in place for fairness and to protect minorities, constitute a “war” on that institution? Such claims are childish and self-indulgent – or they would be were they about Christmas. They aren’t.
How could they be? How could an inclusive nod to non-Christians drive pompous blowhards to throw democracy to the wind and demand that we all bow down to their religion? How could not forcing non-Christian children to participate in a month long celebration of Christianity drive these gasbags to apoplexy? Christians are free to celebrate their myths in their own ways, to engage in personal prayer anytime and anywhere, and to put up icons or even a stable on any property not maintained by taxes. And this is in a society already dripping with Christian ethos. How could this not be enough?
Somehow, it isn’t. Witness the perpetual, non-biblical myth that the founders intended a Christian nation. Witness the constant pressure on every institution of society to institutionalize Christianity. (To appreciate the stunning extent of such efforts, visit the web site of any church-state watchdog group.)
Cries that Christmas and Christians are victims are a deception. The real complaint is, can only be, that a massively dominant majority is not allowed the tyrannical power it once held.
The loudest war cries come from radio cranks and television bull-throwers looking for something to rail against that requires neither research nor reflection (either of which would cost them their audience). The impulse is to laugh. But if you are a non-Christian or just a Christian who is insufficiently zealous, don’t laugh too hard. Claims of a war on Christmas really are a declaration of war on us.
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