I've already explained where I stand on the whole "defend Christmas from the "Holidays" movement--I don't wish to "de-Christianize" it in the least, and in the name of keeping it a Christian holiday think it ought not to remain a federal one. So I don't fully understand the offense conservatives take at "Happy Holidays," when the very fact that Christmas is a federal holiday means that with each passing year Christmas moves closer to embracing all Americans--in doing so, it will inevitably become less "Christian," since not all Americans are Christian.
But what seems most ridiculous in the Weekly Standard's defiant, pro-"Merry Christmas" editorial isn't their silly take on the issue at hand, but is rather their insistence on the datedness of their adversaries' opinion, as if what really matters is not that their opponents are, in their view, wrong, but that they are unfashionable:
Such "attempts to de-Christianize Christmas are as absurd as they are relentless," Weekly Standard contributing editor Charles Krauthammer wrote last week in the Washington Post. And does no one notice how antiquated these attempts seem? How 1970s it all feels: disco shirts, and platform shoes, and the flurry of Christmas lawsuits from the ACLU? When the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the decision felt not merely outrageous, but also curiously old-fashioned--dated and quaint, somehow, as though the superannuated judges couldn't see just how far a changed world had left them behind.
Yeah, who are these people, still wearing disco shirts and platform shoes? Don't they know that these days, antlers are where it's at?
Christmas is gone. It has lost. It used to be a holiday, that is, a day off from the bustle of the everday world. Only a few people, like doctors, cops, or firemen, had to work on Christmas.
ReplyDeleteYou can imagine our shock. Our SUPERMARKET will be open for THREE HOURS on Christmas Day. What is this? One hour for each king?
We asked our checker outerer about this, and she said that they were lucky. Walmart was open, all day, Christmas Day!
There are not enough Jews and Hindus out here to run a Walmart and a Safeway. If Christians can't get time off to celebrate Jesus H. Christ's birthday, then Christmas and Christ have parted company, and that's all there is to it.
Merry X-Mass.