Twas the month before Christmas

[trueimage 0]

*Twas the month before Christmas*

*When all through our land,*

*Not a Christian was praying*

*Nor taking a stand.*

*See the PC Police had taken away,*

*The reason for Christmas - no one could say.*

*The children were told by their schools not to sing,*

*About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.*

*It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say*

* December 25th is just a "Holiday".*

*Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit*

*Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!*

*CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod*

*Something was changing, something quite odd! *

*Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa*

*In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.*

*As Targets were hanging their trees upside down*

* At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.*

*At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears*

*You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.*

*Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty*

*Are words that were used to intimidate me.*

*Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen*

*On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!*

*At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter*

*To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.*

*And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith*

; * Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace*

*The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded*

*The reason for the season, stopped before it started.*

*So as you celebrate "Winter Break" under your "Dream Tree"*

*Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.*

*Choose your words carefully, choose what you say*

*Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS ,

not Happy Holiday!*

[Ban Hammer 13,643]

[Aymerlu 3]

LOVE it!

[Amby 490]

I like that

[Nagishkaw 510]

Amen!

[pedroh 21]

yes, they don't play Feliz Navidad as much as before

[one...two...tree 2,762]

oh please...

[one...two...tree 2,762]

In Their Own Words

The Right Wing’s War on "Happy Holidays"

For decades, millions of Americans have used the phrase “Happy Holidays” as shorthand for “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,” and countless more say the words to express their best wishes to all – no matter what they celebrate this time of year. Whatever its origin, there can be no doubt that “Happy Holidays” is said in the spirit of generosity and good will. It is almost impossible to imagine anybody wishing his or her neighbor “Happy Holidays” with a hostile intent.

And yet, that is the basic premise of a right-wing campaign against this commonplace and benign greeting. According to this campaign’s proponents – who include major media personalities like Bill O’Reilly of Fox News Channel and major religious figures such as Jerry Falwell, along with full-time religious-right activists like the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue – saying “Happy Holidays” is a slap in the face to Christians. What’s more, it’s part of a “very secret plan” (as Bill O’Reilly put it) to “ban” Christmas and attack Christianity itself. As John Gibson, host of Fox’s “The Big Story,” wrote in his book The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse Than You Thought, “The war on Christmas is worse than I thought—and perhaps than you thought, because it’s really a war on Christianity.”

Boycotting “Happy Holidays”

The first target of this high-stakes campaign has been retail stores, a number of which have used the phrase “Happy Holidays,” alone or in combination with other festive greetings such as “Merry Christmas,” in their stores and advertising. For some right-wing activists, this is an outrageous scandal – Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America called it “grating and insulting,” and added, “It's an act of cultural cowardice and even an overt attack on Christmas and ultimately the Christian faith.” He claimed the use of “Happy Holidays” is an effort on the part of retailers “to ban the very mention of Christmas.” Similarly, Bill O’Reilly said it is “insulting to Christian America” for stores to say something other than “Merry Christmas,” and suggested there is an “anti-Christian bias.”

For two days, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights attempted to orchestrate a boycott against Wal-Mart, complaining that not only was the behemoth store saying “Happy Holidays,” but that it had also directed users of its web site who searched for “Christmas” to a “holiday” page. “We only trigger boycotts when we’ve been grossly offended,” said Donohue, declaring victory after Wal-Mart created a “Christmas” web page and fired a customer service employee. He called the boycott a “sweet victory for the Catholic League, Christians in general, and people of all faiths.”

Until last weekend, the American Family Association organized a boycott against Target, accusing the store of operating a “ban” on Christmas by refusing to use the word in in-store promotions. The retail chain denied the charge (“I don't know where they're coming from … You can see it in our stores,” said a spokeswoman); nevertheless, the store issued a statement promising to be “more specific,” and AFA ended its boycott, saying it was “pleased” that “Target has heard our concerns and decided to use Christmas in their advertising and marketing efforts.”

Other stores on the receiving end of the campaign include Land’s End – Donohue’s “beef” with them was a consumer relations employee who cited “love for one’s fellowman—no matter what his race, religion or creed” as a reason for not printing “Merry Christmas” on the catalog – and Sears, target of a boycott by the Committee to Save Merry Christmas. Lowe’s, the hardware store, was “caught” by the Radical Right selling “holiday trees.”

Are these corporations trying to reach as many customers as they can using generic seasonal greetings, out of respect for diversity or even respect for the bottom line? According to some right-wing personalities, that’s not the case – instead, they claim, there is a conspiracy afoot to, in the words of Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, “obliterate Christmas,” and it has taken hold in the nation’s shopping malls!

A “Liberal Plot” or: George Soros – the “Moneyman” Behind the “War on Christmas”

On Fox News’ “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” Bill O’Reilly claimed that so-called “secular progressives” are “driving this movement” because they “don’t want Christmas … [They] don't want any message of spirituality or Judeo-Christian tradition because that stands in the way of gay marriage, legalized drugs, euthanasia, all of the greatest hits on the secular progressive play card.” When asked who “they” were, O’Reilly responded, “George Soros. He's the moneyman behind it.” On his own radio show, O’Reilly promised that he would “use all the power that I have on radio and television to bring horror into the world” of the supposed “oppressive, totalitarian, anti-Christian forces in this country” who “diminish and denigrate the holiday and the celebration.”

This imaginary conspiracy reaches into municipal offices and public school districts across the nation, according to John Gibson. In his book “The War on Christmas,” Gibson relates a handful of anecdotes of small-town officials and superintendents who crossed the line in “banning” Christmas trees or calling a school break a “winter break” – in some cases, allegedly violating the rights of school children or public citizens to include voluntary religious expression in public forums. Other cases, however, involve efforts by these officials to be respectful and inclusive to the diversity of faiths and practices.

For example, Gibson tells about an Indiana Law School dean who erected a giant Christmas tree, then replaced it, without much thought, with a “typical Indiana winter woodlands scene” – including a Christmas tree – after two Jewish students told him the first tree was a bit “imposing.” As Gibson relates, it was “hypervigilant Christian students” who “were positive they had caught the school in what they believed was yet another incident that demonstrated an anti-Christian bias.” As the news media spread the story, the dean began receiving hate mail and even death threats from around the country for his supposed “bias against Christianity” – over what Gibson himself paints as a misunderstanding and an attempt to be inclusive.

In this story, as in most of Gibson’s others, there is no villain – just, as he said in a promotional event for his book at the Heritage Foundation, “good, ordinary citizens trying to do the right thing” and going “astray.”

Nevertheless – as he implies in the subtitle to his recently released book - How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse Than You Thought - Gibson claims to be able to discern a “conspiracy” against Christmas, a “plot … embedded in the secular ‘Humanist Manifesto’ … in the philosophy of John Dewey, in the legal opinions of Laurence Tribe, in the rulings of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal [sic],” and so forth. He writes that “The wagers of this war on Christmas are a cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists and liberal, guilt-wracked Christians” (generously noting, in contrast to other commentators, that they are “not just Jewish people”).

He calls out “brand-name liberal institutions” – including People For the American Way – as supposedly providing “legal muscle” to “the anti-Christmas warriors,” and he targets inclusive Christian churches that he claims act as “institutional backers of the war on Christmas … These are the churches that marry gays and turn their backs on preborn babies.” Revealing the partisan undertones of this campaign Gibson adds, “Their congregants vote for John Kerry [D-Mass.], Ted Kennedy [D-Mass.], and Barney Frank [D-Mass.].”

As he expands this “conspiracy” to encompass not just a “war on Christmas,” but a “war on Christians,” Gibson warns that a “revolution against Christianity” is “under way.”

It is one thing to criticize the decisions by disparate local officials as incorrect or unconstitutional – which may or may not be so, depending on the circumstances. It is quite another to invent a “cabal” that supposedly pulls the strings of school board members and city administrators. Asked by a supporter at the Heritage Foundation event to elaborate on the “plot,” Gibson admitted that “Finding who it is is a very difficult thing. It’s very amorphous.”

George and Laura Bush - “Enemies of Christmas”?

According to an Ohio-based outfit called “Operation: Just Say ‘Merry Christmas,’” it is the “enemies of Christmas” who have pushed America to “an all time low point in our nation's history.”

Apparently, these “enemies” include some at the highest levels of government. The greeting card sent recently by President Bush and the First Lady failed to contain the words “Merry Christmas,” instead wishing its 1.4 million recipients a happy “holiday season.” The explanation from Mrs. Bush’s press secretary that the cards “are sent to people of all faiths” is apparently not good enough for those on the right who have decided to use this issue strategically to advance the notion that “Christianity is under attack.”

Joseph Farah, editor of the right-wing web site WorldNetDaily, threw his card in the trash, saying that the president “claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one.” Catholic League president Bill Donohue suggested Bush was “dumbing down Christmas” and said the Bushes are “no better than the retailers who have lost the will to say 'Merry Christmas.’”

Farah went so far as to demand that the president “apologize to Christians in America and around the world” for cracking a joke about Santa Claus at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree!

Alito Portrayed as “Protector of Christmas”

The theme of the so-called “war on Christmas” has extended even to the debate over President Bush’s radical Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito. The right-wing group the Committee for Justice, formed to promote Bush’s judicial nominees, unveiled a radio advertisement accusing opponents of Alito’s confirmation of also being opponents of Christmas. The ad says, “It's the season when Americans celebrate our traditions of faith, and once again religious freedom is under assault. Why? Because liberal groups like People for the American Way and the ACLU have opposed public Christmas and Chanukah displays and even fought to keep Christmas carols out of school. … Now, these liberal groups are attacking Judge Alito because he won't support their agenda.”

Fidelis, a group formed last summer that has attempted to intimidate critics of Bush’s judicial nominees with charges of “anti-Catholic” bigotry, also released an Internet ad attempting to tie the Alito nomination with the so-called “war on Christmas.” It paints Alito as a protector of holiday displays. Fidelis claims that opponents of Alito “are openly hostile to time-honored expressions of religious liberty and thus oppose judges like Sam Alito.”

According to Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, right-wing judiciary activists intend to fully capitalize on the dubious connection between Alito and the so-called “war on Christmas.” Said Sekulow, “This is going to be the dominant theme on the Alito nomination until the end of the year-the convergence of a Supreme Court nomination, the Christmas season, and [Alito],” who Sekulow claims “has a well-staked-out position on support for religious expression.”

"Victory" Through Intimidation

Until year's end, writes Don Feder – president of a group called “Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation” – we can expect “take-no-prisoner, hand-to-hand combat in school corridors, public parks, parades and retail establishments.” And, if you listen to right-wing activists, well-meaning Americans need to watch what they say.

Concerned Women for America’s Robert Knight admitted on CNN that at “one time ‘Happy Holidays’ was a welcome addition to ‘Merry Christmas,’ so you wouldn’t say the same thing over and over again.” Now, however, he claims it is “actually insulting” – he even went so far as to compare America’s holiday season with Nazi Europe. And Bill O’Reilly insists that saying “Season’s Greetings” and “Happy Holidays” does “offend Christians.” Said O’Reilly, “It absolutely does. And I know that for a fact.”

As Focus on the Family president James Dobson complains of attempts to “snuff out” Christmas, Rick Scarborough of Vision America warns that Christ is being “kicked out of his own birthday party,” and the airwaves and Internet are flooded with claims like those of E. Ralph Hostetter of the Free Congress Foundation that “Never before in modern times have attacks against Christmas and Christianity been so intense.” And as this absurdist campaign to invent a “war on Christmas” escalates, more and more people are becoming convinced that they need to be “offended” when somebody wishes them a friendly greeting like “Happy Holidays.” According to a Fox News poll, a full forty-two percent of respondents believe there is a “war on Christmas” going on, and forty-five percent say they are offended by stores saying “Happy Holidays.”

And as the “Christmas conspiracy”-themed ads attacking critics of Alito demonstrate, the threat of a so-called “war on Christmas” can be used to advance any number of items on the right-wing agenda – from decoration contests, where nothing is at stake, to a Supreme Court seat that could decide the future of many constitutional protections Americans take for granted. Just as Donohue used wild accusations of anti-Catholic “bigotry” on the part of critics of the elevation of Chief Justice John Roberts to achieve victory through intimidation, so too does the current campaign seek to silence America’s voices through accusations of a far-reaching “conspiracy” against Christmas and even Christianity, a “conspiracy” which exists only in the right-wing imagination.

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=20138

[Fandango 1,440]

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Kazan' Tiger 1]

I've known too many people that have been told by their employers to not wish any client a Merry Christmas for fear of offending them. I am happy all continue to do as they chose. Now the lastest, Santa should say, Ha, ha, ha. as "ho" is offensive. Hmmm, which came first, Santa's, "Ho, ho, ho!" or that ghetto slang. Bah humbug, PC folks, leave tradition alone.