Smackie the Frog

I forgot to talk about “The War on Christmas” in my previous post about things that have been bothering me, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been bothering me. No, in fact it has been bothering me a great deal. I just forgot to include it. So here, in all its glory: The War on The War on Christmas.

I’ve never considered myself Christian. I don’t believe in “Christian” beliefs. I share Christian morals on many things, but I think that those morals could just as easily be called Islamic morals or Judaic morals or perhaps human decency morals. However, my family has always celebrated Christian holidays. We have Christmas, we have Easter. So I came up with the phrase “culturally Christian” to describe this. I’m also, as you’ve probably gathered, a crazy liberal hippy.

I mention this, because apparently, according to Bill O’Reilly and his ilk, I am part of a vast and evil plot to destroy Christmas. Yep, the liberals and professional atheists (I don’t even know what that is. Can you get paid to be an atheist?) are trying to destroy the very Christian fabric that holds this country together. And we are starting by aiming right at Christmas. We are going to tear this country apart by insisting people say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. And from there it is a slipperly slope. How long until we forget who Jesus even is and start roasting babies on spikes?

Lets first take a look at a few facts:
Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th.
Christmas Trees, Reindeer, stockings, blah blah blah have nothing to do with Jesus’s birth. In fact, many traditional Christmas traditions were stolen from other religions.
Which brings me to why Christmas is celebrated this time of year – because when Christianity was small they decided to piggy back on the celebrations that other religions were having at this time of year.

So from the very beginning, Christmas had nothing to do with Jesus. Jesus was an afterthought. He would have been celebrating Channukah anyway.

But anyway, back to how I’m part of the group that is destroying Christmas. Except, no one is destorying Christmas. If you want to celebrate Christmas, no one is stopping you. Do you really need Wal-Mart to use the word Christmas in order to reaffirm your beliefs? Are you so afraid of losing your identity that if Target says “Happy Holidays” that you have to have a boycott?

What these people fail to miss is that more and more this country is becoming less Christian. Around 70 million people don’t identify themselves as Christian. The number of people who identify with no religion has doubled since 1990. Because of this it only makes sense to say Happy Holidays. If Happy Holidays includes 98% of the people, and Merry Christmas includes 70% of the people, of course you are going to go with Happy Holidays, especially if you are Wal-mart. Diversity is a good thing, and including everyone is taking a step in the right direction into fixing the problems of the world. (I’d be willing to venture a bet that if we were to expand the ideas behind saying Happy Holidays to our dealings with the rest of the world, terrorism would decline.) No one is saying you can’t have your holiday. They are just saying let us have ours too.

So here is my advice to these people who are fighting the War on Christmas. You’re fighting the wrong war. If you care about Christmas, then privately celebrate it in a manner appropriate to your religion. Honoring your savior’s birth and sharing love with your family and friends. But get over the fact that the demographics of this country is changing, and the more that you fight to regain Christianity’s place in this country, the more it is going to slip away. No one is trying to destroy your holiday. Don’t be so full of yourselves. There is more important stuff going on than caring about Christmas Trees and Holiday trees.

And please, do not say “Merry Christmas” as some sort of political statement. Or I’ll say “Merry Fuck You” right back at you.