A manufactured attack on Christmas

December 21, 2007

TBogg reports about another case of “they banned Christmas!” turning out to be, well, not so true. Conservative writer Mark Tapscott backs off the charge a bit, but insists that:

…it’s clearsomebody at SWOSU got the idea that employees there should be told to stop using such terms as “Christmas” and “Christ.” I have no doubt that Edmondson personally didn’t provide SWOSU “legal advice” in a formal advisory opinion. The man isn’t dumb. But AGs and their staff provide informal advice every day, sometimes in person, sometimes in email, sometimes on the telephone. Sometimes even to journalists!

Maybe that somebody mis-understood something that was said to them by the AG or his staff. Or maybe that somebody simply took it upon themselves and informally advised SWOSU managers to spread the word among the troops. That somebody ought to come forward and clear up the confusion. [ Mark Tapscott, emphasis in the original ]

Maybe that somebody is Bill O’Reilly or other Christmas Warriors like Mark Tapscott, because everyone knows there’s a War on Christmas and you can get your pants sued off for saying the phrase in public. So our more nervous nellies take it upon themselves to over-comply and demand others over-comply just to be on the safe side. I pointed to an article about this in 2005, but it’s worth quoting the same passage here again:

“You have a dynamic here, where you have the Christian right hysterically overrepresenting the problem, and then anecdotally you have some towns where lawyers restrict any kind of display or representation of religion, which is equally absurd,” says Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates and one of the foremost experts on the religious right. “It’s a closed loop. In that dynamic, neither the secular humanists or the ACLU are playing a role.”

In the end by whipping up a hysteria about a threat that doesn’t actually exist, the true persecutors of Christians are the Christians themselves. It’s like living in a nice neighborhood but putting iron bars over your windows. The Far Right is in the grip of full-fledged paranoia, and it’s been harshing everyone’s buzz for several years now. Take a deep breath, step outside, shake hands with the neighbors. We’re not really all that bad. I will even wish you a Merry Christmas.

Posted in Religion