Ho Ho No!

‘Tis the season to be caustic.

The astute observer of the national news will no doubt have noticed by now that in addition to our country’s wars on terrorism, drugs, poverty, and high school students, we now have a new war to draw the media’s imagination. We are apparently in the midst of a “War on Christmas”, information of said war courtesy of Fox News.

The opening volleys of The War were fired, shot-heard-round-the-world-style, by Target of all companies for publicly wishing its customers a “Happy Holidays” instead of the more traditional “Merry Christmas”. This has turned many a concerned citizen-cum-armchair sociologist into published author on the subject of how our secular country is now in an armed conflict against the sacred holiday. Check out David Limbaugh and John Gibson if you find yourself skeptical amongst all the Christmas lights this season.

The general consensus by such authors and indeed the ever-wise Average Joe citizen on the street is that such behavior is an attempt by secularists to remove all traces of Christianity from the world. One internet poll found that 66% of those surveyed believe that the war is real and legitimate and something should be done about it. With that in mind, I have decided to answer their call and do what I can. Never deaf to the wailing concerns of the vox populi, I have decided this festive season to Do Something.

I’m going to launch war on Christmas.

Not a war of words, mind you. I’m talking actual, full-on, ten tanks-a’rollin’, nine guns-a-blazin’, soon my laser-ray will destroy all of Gotham City type war. My warriors will abduct Santa Clauses from malls all over the country and hold them in dingy basements, hogtied, while they video tape one of them getting their neck cut open and then send it to Al-Jazeera. I’m going to firebomb all the local purveyors of Christmas decorations. I’ll call in bomb threats to every local television station that plans on playing yet another round of It’s a Wonderful Life or The Charlie Brown Christmas. I’ll officially open reindeer season for all area hunters. Red and green will no longer be permitted color schemes for clothing. Henceforth all will wear gray. Our group will call itself the Christmas Liberation Army of the United States or CLAUS, if you prefer. In short, I’m gonna go Shock and Awe on this Christmas thing.

Wherefore such vehemence? It actually goes back to my feelings on marginalization. One of my biggest pet peeves is a group of people who are in power trying to claim that somehow they’ve been made insignificant and the religious right declaring that there is a War on Christmas is just about the biggest example of this that I can find. I’ve seen billboards urging the population to “keep Christ in Christmas” as if there were some way to extricate Him from it.

What it boils down to is another example of an incredibly powerful monster throwing a tempter tantrum when it doesn’t get everything it wants. The religious right, still apparently high on their victory of getting the public to vote for the current president even a year later, will not be satisfied as long as there is any public recognition of any way of thought other than its own. Members proclaim that they are being persecuted as Christians because a couple of stores want to make sure they themselves are being inclusive to all of their customers. And what evil manner of persecution are they being subjected to? What eternal torment? What aching destruction? Being wished "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Hear that sound? That’s the sound of the early Christians, the ones that were actually hunted down and slaughtered for their beliefs, rolling in their collective graves.

Pettiness is a close second on my list of pet peeves.

All of this should serve as proof that even those in the service of God are not invulnerable to the intoxications of power and influence. Indeed, one could argue that they are at the most risk. Beware those who have either nothing to lose, or everything to gain. Both are powerful positions to be in and those who have everything to gain also tend to have everything by which to gain it with.

This time of year has been special for many of the world’s major religions throughout time. It is arrogance in the extreme that one of them now, one that isn’t even the oldest I might add, would bristle because it is not mentioned first and foremost over all the rest in the litany of festive greetings. I believe the phrase is “pride goeth before the fall.” If, as many Christians assert, faith is a function of your personal relationship to your deity and His/Her representatives, the failure of a department store chain to tell you to have a nice whatever shouldn’t be a cataclysmic issue. Why not take the gesture for what it is - an attempt to wish you tidings of good cheer, to say nothing of peace and happiness, and not undo the entire thing by launching into offense because people don’t want to assume that they know what type of building you worship in. It should be the ultimate disgrace on your person that you were so self-absorbed that you weren’t able to accept a kindly wish from a stranger because it wasn’t wrapped in the correct packaging.

So, have a Happy Holidays, be that Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chanukah, Solstice, or just the 25^th of December which you got off from work because of the rest of us nuts. And whatever your personal creed, celebrate it. I will be thankful that there are still remnants of society that take the time to be kind to one another even though no earthly law legislates that they must be.

Happy Christmas to all, but get over yourselves.