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. . . (P)roperly speaking, Christmas should be about as controversial as puppies, kittens, motherhood, and Scotch: Just one of those things everyone agrees is a good thing. Indeed, that’s the underlying assumption among Christmas’s cable-show champions: Christmas used to be something that united us — but not anymore, thanks to the secular humanists, multiculturalists, and other killjoys. And that’s absolutely true. Christmas was uncontroversial for a while. Then it was controversial. Then it was uncontroversial. And so on. That’s because Christmas is in fact older than cable TV . . .. . . That wasn’t the only problem with Christmas. Protestants didn’t like the way Catholics observed the holiday, and vice versa. In England, the extravagant Christmas parties thrown by Catholics were seen, as P. J. mentioned, as uncouth, the “trappings of popery†and “rags of the beast†(two fantastic names for an ultramontane punk-rock band). The Catholic Church tried to counteract the problem by emphasizing that Christmastime was a holy celebration, not an excuse to let your freak flag fly. But it ultimately didn’t work. When Cromwell took over, he banned the holiday entirely, something the ACLU only dreams of doing today.Cromwell’s ban was lifted, but for a long time the popularity of Christmas dwindled in the New World and Britain. By 1820 the English poet and essayist Leigh Hunt wrote that it was a holiday “scarcely worth mention.†It wasn’t quite as forgettable as Arbor Day or the WNBA championships, but it wasn’t the big deal we think of today, either. And the person most responsible for reviving it wasn’t a religious figure at all, but a literary one: Charles Dickens . . .. . . Thanks to Charles Dickens, Christmas became a time when parents thought about the Christmas they wished they had had when they were kids. And so they set out to deliver it to their own children. That’s one of the keys to Christmas’s enduring popularity. As Bill Murray says in Scrooged . . . at Christmastime, however briefly, “We are the people we always hoped we would be" . . .. . . I’m not normally in the habit of giving advice to Christians about how to observe their faith. But as a tactical matter, if you want to put the Christ back in Christmas, my advice would be to follow Jesus’s exhortation to turn the other cheek. The best offense against humorless prigs isn’t counterveiling humorless priggery. It’s good cheer . . . Say “Merry Christmas†with joy in your heart and have a good time — if for no other reason than the fact that nothing pisses off the people who hate Christmas more than people actually enjoying Christmas.And by all means, let us redouble our efforts in our defensive war against relativism or the relentless erosion of our culture by political correctness. But there are other days of the year to have those arguments. The whole point of Christmas is not to have arguments.That’s what Thanksgiving dinner is for.
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Topic: The War on Christmas (Read 364 times)
