The Prince of Peace and the Holiday Formerly Known as Christmas
I shall bear a column and it's name shall be called "The Prince of Peace and the Holiday Formerly Known as Christmas". Every year since The John Birch Society got the snowball rolling in 1959 with a pamphlet entitled "There Goes Christmas?!", someone in the ever-protesting world of quick-shake-up ultra-Conservatism has been whispering warnings about the demise of the Christmas season, issuing clarion calls to save Christmas from the tentacles of secular humanists and trial lawyers. [This will seem counterintuitive at this point in the column but go to local News-Talk 920am WGKA to send a Christmas Greeting Card to the ACLU, then read on.] This year, despite Wal-Mart's re-infusion of the Merry Christmas message along with other major department stores around the country, the Mayor's Office of Chicago made the "fateful" mistake of not accepting New Line Cinemas' "The Nativity Story" film to be shown at the German Christkindlmarket festival. (Cue the ultra-zealous Christian Conservative Right!) Few stopped to realize that the Mayor himself professes Christian faith. Few read deeply into the perfectly legitimate logic of the office's Executive Director, Jim Law, when he reasoned that "It would be contrary to acceptable advertising standards suggested to the many festivals holding events on Daley Plaza [to accept the story from New Line]". Despite many of the surrounding circumstances, some in the religious community are still marching out on cue with their "don't step on our baby Jesus" chorus.
What if we were to turn the tables? The ultra-Conservatives say, "You can't outlaw something just to avoid offending someone because some people are always in a desperate hurry to be offended." The glaringly obvious response in cases like the "War on Christmas" is, yeah, like you! Why do ultra-Conservative Devil-Behind-Every-Curtain types so often react rather than respond? Reaction happens as a defensive maneuver and comes off to many as a brand of fear and, in some cases, hatred. Responding usually brings a more reasoned solution. Instead of losing your Christmas spirit in defense of the Christmas spirit, have a little fun with it. Send the ACLU a Christmas Card rather than railing against their every move. After all, believe it or not, on occasion they have silently supported the public expression of Christmas. Don't believe me? Look up the "Rita Warren against Fairfax, Virginia" case where the ACLU championed her right to erect a nativity scene on government property because of earlier precedents set by the City of Fairfax. The point is, the ultra-Conservatives are often guilty of the same hypersensitivity they accuse the Left of having (and I say this as a Conservative). Richard Hofstadter wrote in "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," "The typical procedure of the higher paranoid scholarship is to start with such defensible assumptions and with a careful accumulation of facts, or at least of what appear to be facts, and to marshal these facts toward an overwhelming `proof' of the particular conspiracy that is to be established." Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, comments, "You have a dynamic here, where you have the Christian right hysterically overrepresenting the problem, and then anecdotally you have some towns where lawyers restrict any kind of display or representation of religion, which is equally absurd." Before long, you have the jingle bell rocks! Every misguided school that bans Christmas displays becomes a slippery slope that lobbyists and trial lawyers will use to push through in every classroom of every school district in North America until X-masness is the rule of the land. Sure, the ACLU will turn around and do the two-step with another case like outlawing Christmas carols in a Nashville, Tennesee school, but do you really think it will lead to a triumph of secularism over a holiday like Christmas that thrives on an indwelling belief that cannot be legislated against? And furthermore, what do Christians often do once we have achieved our objective of having "Merry Christmas" hanging over our favorite Simon Shopping Mall? Do we actively engage culture with a modeled faith throughout the year or simply say we've won the war of faith because it is now prominently displayed in public? Do we consistently share Christ or transfer our evangelical responsibility onto a "Merry Christmas" banner or some other religious display? Perhaps the war is not over eradicating Christmas from the public sphere, the public sphere has resoundingly said they want and in fact need it as a reminder of peace. The Season of a Saviour that represents that internal peace is not going anywhere within a public sphere that continues to express renewed fervor overall for the message. The question for the ultra-Conservative Christian Right, Are we serving that baby or using Him as our battering ram? What is the benchmark of His success? Is it simply keeping His presence in the public sphere, or His having a relevant presence there? If the latter is more true, then we better behave ourselves.
What if we were to turn the tables? The ultra-Conservatives say, "You can't outlaw something just to avoid offending someone because some people are always in a desperate hurry to be offended." The glaringly obvious response in cases like the "War on Christmas" is, yeah, like you! Why do ultra-Conservative Devil-Behind-Every-Curtain types so often react rather than respond? Reaction happens as a defensive maneuver and comes off to many as a brand of fear and, in some cases, hatred. Responding usually brings a more reasoned solution. Instead of losing your Christmas spirit in defense of the Christmas spirit, have a little fun with it. Send the ACLU a Christmas Card rather than railing against their every move. After all, believe it or not, on occasion they have silently supported the public expression of Christmas. Don't believe me? Look up the "Rita Warren against Fairfax, Virginia" case where the ACLU championed her right to erect a nativity scene on government property because of earlier precedents set by the City of Fairfax. The point is, the ultra-Conservatives are often guilty of the same hypersensitivity they accuse the Left of having (and I say this as a Conservative). Richard Hofstadter wrote in "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," "The typical procedure of the higher paranoid scholarship is to start with such defensible assumptions and with a careful accumulation of facts, or at least of what appear to be facts, and to marshal these facts toward an overwhelming `proof' of the particular conspiracy that is to be established." Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, comments, "You have a dynamic here, where you have the Christian right hysterically overrepresenting the problem, and then anecdotally you have some towns where lawyers restrict any kind of display or representation of religion, which is equally absurd." Before long, you have the jingle bell rocks! Every misguided school that bans Christmas displays becomes a slippery slope that lobbyists and trial lawyers will use to push through in every classroom of every school district in North America until X-masness is the rule of the land. Sure, the ACLU will turn around and do the two-step with another case like outlawing Christmas carols in a Nashville, Tennesee school, but do you really think it will lead to a triumph of secularism over a holiday like Christmas that thrives on an indwelling belief that cannot be legislated against? And furthermore, what do Christians often do once we have achieved our objective of having "Merry Christmas" hanging over our favorite Simon Shopping Mall? Do we actively engage culture with a modeled faith throughout the year or simply say we've won the war of faith because it is now prominently displayed in public? Do we consistently share Christ or transfer our evangelical responsibility onto a "Merry Christmas" banner or some other religious display? Perhaps the war is not over eradicating Christmas from the public sphere, the public sphere has resoundingly said they want and in fact need it as a reminder of peace. The Season of a Saviour that represents that internal peace is not going anywhere within a public sphere that continues to express renewed fervor overall for the message. The question for the ultra-Conservative Christian Right, Are we serving that baby or using Him as our battering ram? What is the benchmark of His success? Is it simply keeping His presence in the public sphere, or His having a relevant presence there? If the latter is more true, then we better behave ourselves.
posted by Joel Aaron at 1:08 PM
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