Your Thoughts Exactly

I'm sure this is sort of old news by now, but over the past month (and the past few Christmases) an argument being made by the ultra-conservative right is that the liberal media is polluting Christmas by making it available to the masses, by depriving it of its Christian roots and even totally secularizing it by calling it "the holiday season".

I don't know if this stems from some deep-seated Christian need to feel persecuted, but as Jon Stewart said- "you guys have pretty much been in charge for the last 2,000 years." No, this doesn't really have anything to do with Christianity. Actually, I think it's nothing more than a pretty clever ploy by the conservatives to get liberals back on the defensive.

Not that it's evil. I'm not saying 'oh great, those damn CONSERVATIVES are at it again'. I'm just pointing out that I think this is more a strategic ploy than a real issue that the leadership of conservatives care about. In fact I wish the democrats were better strategists of this kind.

And of course, this could be all totally false, like all my posts, but I came up with this theory when I was reading some article accusing Wal-Mart of trying to cater to the small minority (I think the article said less than 10% of America didn't celebrate Christmas) while offending the majority of America- that they cared more about non-christians than Christians! Gasp!

Now, Wal-Mart, like any good corporation, probably spent a lot of man-hours on their entire holiday strategy. What exactly to say, how exactly to say it, what imagery to put in their ads, their decision to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" were all probably rehashed a thousand times each year, every year. And even they didn't see this coming (and it's probably a safe bet that like the Waltons, a lot of the execs are actually Republicans themselves). And they are, ostensibly, doing the right thing in not just caving into the majority and saying "screw those Hannukah-celebrating bastards!" So where is this strange backlash coming from? How is it that "Happy Holidays"carries even a little bit of controversy?

I 'celebrated' Christmas two days ago in a pretty secular, Americanized way. We had a tree, we had presents. I even said Merry Christmas. And, as you may or may not know if you've ever read this blog, I'm an atheist. I didn't go around saying Happy Holidays, even though I might be considered in the prime demographic for someone in the War Against Christmas. So when this story started breaking in fine news outlets such as the O'Reilly Factor, I actually thought "Well, it is an American holiday, and I doubt anyone, myself included, would be offended if they changed to Merry Christmas."

And I probably still wouldn't. But the point here is that somehow, they've gotten the backlash worked up enough to the point that they are actually convincing people that being politically correct- trying not to offend, trying to do basically the "Right Thing", is somehow offensive. That not only should places like Wal-Mart be catering to Christians, they should have no qualms about brushing aside all non-Christians. And on Wikipedia, I actually had to edit out of the article a section where some enterprising young citizen had added a small section of a few companies (including Wal-Mart) that say "Happy Holidays" instead of Christmas. Why was this relevant at all, I wonder? Why were they singling out these few companies when the vast majority of the large national companies say "Happy Holidays" at this time of year? I think it's simply to give attention to the nation's largest retailer- to get easily swayed Christians to boycott Wal-Mart (or at least start a letter-writing campaign)- and get Wal-Mart to change their ways. That way, other retailers will start to follow.

And what is really the point of all this? Well, first, it's subtle. It gets the attention off other bigger things going on in the political world, but at the same time it's something that everyone can have an opinion on. And it doesn't get confused with the war in Iraq, so the story is something that gets carried as a sort of 'on the lighter side of things' in most news outlets. Secondly, like I'm trying to point out- it gets people thinking in an us vs. them attitude. "I'm a Christian, and so is most of the US, so we should be a Christian nation!" Screw the minority, this should simply be a matter of tyranny of the majority. And once you have enough people thinking that way, some get to thinking that anything Christian is the only way forward.

So what can the liberals do? We can't simply try and get everyone back to saying 'Happy Holidays'- that would play right into their trap that we are indeed trying to destroy Christmas. And by ignoring the 'issue' (which is mostly what has been happening) you simply mitigate its effects. I don't think there is anything else that can be done- which is why it is good strategy.