Soapbox

A Modest Proposal

Republicans have spent a lot of energy lately getting themselves all worked up about fake-issues. One of the hottest in December has been the “Put Christ back in christmas” hue and cry, taken up by Cal Thomas and by Bill O’Reilly, who runs a regular segment he calls “Christmas under Siege”.

Yes, according to O’Reilly, poor, picked on Christians are being pushed around by those politically correct, heathen liberals for years. Now those secularists have started picking on Christmas, and he personally is willing to take the flack for “standing up for the baby Jesus”!

What utter silliness! Christmas, folks, is NOT under seige. Christmas as a holiday is alive and living in every mall from sea to shining sea. Christmas as a spiritual event is as real and vibrant as you are prepared to make it.

The only one who can take Christ out of Christmas for you is you. Your Christmas this year will be as meaningful, or as phoney, or as non-existant as you want it to be.

Christmas is certainly overly-commercialized. This year I saw Christmas decorations and artificial trees in stores before Labor Day! Two local radio stations began playing only Christmas carols 24/7 starting the day before Thanksgiving! That’s just wrong. Frankly, when Christmas lasts that long, you change it from something special into something tedious .

Still, no one forces you to decorate your personal space like someone barfed Christmas all over your front yard, or to drive yourself mad and broke trying to get all thie gifts on everyone’s list. If your Christmas is too commercial for your tastes, talk to your local Jehova’s Witnesses. They’ll no doubt be happy to give you advice on getting away from all the pagan celebration and back to the true meaning of Christmas.

But the Republican Christian martyrdom complex doesn’t focus on their fellow christians who put 7 foot tall inflatable santas in their front yard. When O’Reilly said, “Somewhere, Jesus is weeping” he wasn’t refering to children going hungry in the wealthiest nation on earth, or the bombs that will fall on Christmas day. No, he thinks Jesus weeps over the horrifying phrase “Happy Holidaysâ€? and the obscene lack of Nativity scenes at our local post offices.

It’s true that many schools no longer call their annual December event a “Christmas party”, chosing instead to name it a “Holiday Celebration”, and sing strictly secular holiday songs. But right-wing complainers conveniently mistake the reason for this change. They label it mere “political correctnessâ€? and lament that a “nation founded on Judeo-Christian traditionsâ€? (a favorite phrase this year) is so concerned about offending a few muslims and athiests that “we can’t even have Christmas”. The horror!

Athiest and Muslim Americans may or may not be offended by a Christmas concert at their child’s school- I don’t know. I don’t care. I get offended by things that O’Reilly says all the time, and I get over it: so will they. We as a nation haven’t taken to using the term “Holiday” instead of “Christmas” merely to spare a few people’s feelings. The fact is that if your child goes to a public ( government-sponsored, tax-payer funded school) then it would be inappropriate, even un-American for that school to promote or sponsor one religion over another! That’s the way they do it in Iran, not America.

Look, It is not Uncle Sam’s job to help you celebrate your religious holiday! Its a good thing, too. Can you imagine what Christmas would look like it Congress got involved ?

Part of what makes America so special is that here, each person can chose how, or if, they want to cel.ebrate a religious holiday. If you want to string up enough lights to illuminate a run-way, go for it. If you desperately need to hear your kids sing “O Come all Ye Faithful”, enroll them in the church youth choir or take them caroling. No one is allowed to stop you! Iisn’t that great?

No, I do not find it offensive for children to sing carols in school, but the fact is that we have a proud tradition in this country of protecting all faiths in part by ensuring that the government honor none. This ensures that each of us will always have the right to observe whatever traditions and rites we have that makes the holiday special to us. We should be proud of this, not attack it!

“You can’t even have a nativity scene any more” I heard a woman say on a radio talk show last week, and I wanted to reach through the radio and shake her. Who says you can’t? Tell me, and I’ll sic the ACLU on them, because lady, they wouldn’t stand for it. Put a nativity scene in every roomof your house and one on the roof if you like! They only one that the government of the United states bars from having nativity scenes is itself!

When O’Reilly says that “we can’t even see a picture of Jesus anymore” what he really means is that he can’t see a nativity scene at every post office and court house in America. My question to him is, why would you want one?

Can you not be a Christian without seeing validation of the supremacy of your beliefs every single place you go? Is your faith so shallow that you can’t feel close to God unless you see a plastic Jesus with a lightbulb in its belly, (probably made in China) in front of every government building? If not, then your problem is something you need to discuss with your pastor or priest and not blame on evil Grinch democrat athiests who are trying to steal your Christmas.

The job of the post office is to delilver the mail, not to be a billboard for your personal religous preferences.. The job of a public school is to teach our kids how to read, not how to celebrate Christmas. What part of that concept do these guys not get?

That’s why this is a fake issue. Thomas and O’Reilly act as if Mary is being turned away from the inn all over again. They conveniently forget that a nativity scene is just a bunch of dolls! Jesus is only born in our hearts, and ony we can deny him space there. Based on Jesus’ apparent opinion of governments, I can’t imagine he would care if ours officially promoted Him or not. He was more of a grass-roots guy, wouldn’t you say? It is not the church’s job to run our government, nor the government’s to tout our religion, and I say “halleluia” to that!

Listen up, people. Jesus is not and will never be the underdog in this country. We have Christmas and Easter stamps, federal holidays for Christian celebrations of Christmas and Good Friday and hear christmas carols non-stop in every mall in the nation. Why isn’t that enough? How much validation, how much “You’re right, you’re right!” do you need to hear?

So folks, please stop acting as if Christianity owns the entire month of December! Stop talking as if not sharing your beliefs is the same as denying your right to have them, because it isn’t.

You can celebrate Jesus’ birth every day of the year if you want to, and good for you. Just don’t expect your local post office branch to join you. It’s not what they’re there for!

In closing I would like to quote the words of a very wise man, who once said of Christmas;

It came without ribbons!
It came without tags!
It came without packages, boxes or bags!

And you know what? It comes without a nativity scene at the court house too, if you let it.
Merry Christmas.