The War on Christmas

I don’t understand Christians sometimes. Now, I’m not saying I don’t understand the Christian religion. That one I got down. What I don’t get is this sense of persecution conservative Christians feel. Like this war on Christmas which is supposed to be going on in America. First of all, as far as I can tell, it’s only going on Fox Network News. All around me I see signs that say “Merry Christmas,” I see trees and plastic singing Santas and even crosses and angels and nativity scenes. Where is this oppressed minority of Christians? 80 % of Americans are Christian. How oppressed can they be?

Christians need to be Martyrs. That’s all I can figure out.

The cynic in me sees this as yet another conservative bit of slight of hand, another non-story to distract us from the real stories that make Christian Conservatives and their republican allies uncomfortable. But I’m paranoid.

Along with this Christmas brouhaha, I see Jack Valenti, Hollywood’s official censor for, what, forty years, got called on the carpet by congress this week in yet another ridiculous set of hearings on sex and violence on film.

Let’s get this out in the open: I am an absolutist when it comes to free speech, and the censors in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, both infuriate and scare the pants off of me.

But this is more then that. Like I said yesterday these hearings seem to me just a big smoke screen. Let’s pretend we are actually doing something by saving Christmas from those evil secularists, let’s save baseball from drugs, lets save our children from those sex-mongers in Hollywood, let’s save college football from ABC (ok, that might not be a bad idea). Like anyone is actually going to stand up AGAINST children, baseball, football, and Christmas. These are stupid arguments because the threat is made up. Meanwhile the 9/11 commission issues a report this week giving the administration failing grades on making the US safer from terrorism. America is still vulnerable and Congress is going after juiced ball players.

But back to my Christian brethren. Those who think that because Kmart markets to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Satanists, Pagans, Sikhs, Agnostics and Atheists as well as Christians that they somehow want to throw them to the lions. Get real.

Christians think ANYTHING that does not adhere to their orthodoxy, anything that smacks of sex, anything that smacks of secularism, anything they disagree with is from the devil, and needs to be shouted down, tarred and feathered, and either run out of town or burned at the stake like the heretics back during the inquisition. Go ahead and tell me Pat Robertson doesn’t envy the freedom to deal with troublemakers that Torquemada once had. You see, I know that they would gladly put me on that stake given half a chance. Me and everyone else who believes in freedom of speech.

Or freedom of religion.

Because, you see, in the guise of expressing their religious freedom they are shoving their religion down the throats of people who don’t want it. There’s not a war on Christmas going on in this country, but sometimes I think that there is a war against freedom, and it’s being waged by the conservative Christian right.

Merry Christmas.