The War On Christmas

Several of the blogs I read are discussing the alleged War On Christmas. Now, no doubt they are making the religious types out to be more ridiculous than they really are, but the whole idea that this is some kind of threat to Christianity is insane from the start.

In Bill O'Reilly's words:
Now, first of all, you don't deny that, a few years ago -- and we won this war, largely -- that there was a very effective movement underway to wipe out, in the public square, all vestiges of Christmas. Stores were ordering employees not to say "Merry Christmas." Towns were suing to get the crèche off the public property. You don't deny that was happening, do you?

I don't know what things are like where he is, but here, in December you can't go near a public space without seeing Christmas decorations. But let's imagine there really was such a campaign; and let's leave aside the idea that it would be just as likely run by Puritans. I think it would be good for Christmas - the religious festival, that is.

Two things happen at the end of December. One is the Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice, the time of the Roman festival of Sol Invictus, the Northern European Yuletide, and celebrations in every civilization smart enough to calculate when midwinter is. That generally results in celebrations involving food, drink, and neighbours, and has done since before the OT was first written down. The other is the Christian celebration of Christ's birth, which is in late December for (as far as I can tell) no better reason than to put a religious core into a festive season that is otherwise impossible to tame.

So which one is going to be affected by getting Christmas out of the shops? Unless there are police cordons stopping people from going to church on the 25th (and good luck with that in the gun-happy United States), it's not going to be the religious festival that gets ruined.

If I wanted to destroy Christmas-the-religious-festival, I would make sure that there was lots of money, conspicuous consumption, and commercial excess involved. I'd get the shops in it up to their eyeballs, and make sure they looked on it as a big fat moneyspinner. That will corrupt anything; there's a reason Jesus booted the moneychangers out of the temple. And apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks that.

But I'm way to late to get that ball rolling, and it looks like Bill O'Reilly, for all his apparently pro-Christian bluster, is on the pro-money side.