Stealing Crumbs from the Poor for Jesus: What "War on Christmas" Talk is Really All About
As a Jewish kid growing up in an overwhelmingly Christian country I learned a painful truth about the fundamental nature of the holiday season: Chanukah was the consolation prize we Jews got for not being able to celebrate Christmas like seemingly everyone else, and as consolation prizes went, Chanukah was kind of lame.
That might be a little harsh. God knows we Jews try. We really do but everything we do to try to make Chanukah its own thing, and not just the Jewish Christmas, just serves to underline how wildly inadequate Chanukah is compared to Christmas in pretty much every conceivable way.
Every holiday season Christians fucking feast. They feast all December long. For the endless stretch known as the Christmas season EVERYTHING is for them. Multiplexes are filled with Christmas movies. Christmas songs fill the air. Television is filled with Christmas specials and Christmas-themed ads. On Christmas day, EVERYTHING shuts down with the exception of movie theaters and Chinese restaurants.
And you know what? That’s still somehow not enough for some people. For the “War on Christmas” brigade, the idea that shopkeepers might acknowledge the existence of other faiths and religions beyond Christianity and Christmas represents nothing less than a full-on WAR ON CHRISTMAS.
Thank God someone is willing to stand up tall in the face of all that America represents and say, “Actually, Christmas is good!”
War on Christmas! That’s the language they use. A fucking WAR on Christmas. How unbelievably narcissistic and self-absorbed do you have to be to see a Starbucks clerk not explicitly wishing you a Merry Christmas every time you get a Double Mocha as a violent assault on your faith and way of life?
I’m a college-educated straight white middle-aged husband and father so I know a little something about having everything catered specifically for me. I know what it’s like to be not just seen and acknowledged culturally, but to be wildly over-seen and over-acknowledged. I can consequently afford to be gracious when, for example, Marvel has the audacity to make a movie with a non-white, non-male hero.
I would have to be a fucking thin skinned idiot to see Captain Marvel and Black Panther as an unforgivable assault on my gender and race yet the “War on Christmas” folks nevertheless perceive the meekly inclusive act of wishing “Happy Holidays” as an attack on their faith and way of life.
By saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” all people are doing is acknowledging that religions other than Christianity exist and also that Christmas is not the only winter holiday. That’s not much. In a more sane and civil society, that would be universally acknowledged as literally the least you can do.
This looks terrible!
If you think that not being wished “Merry Christmas” by every shopkeeper you encounter represents an unforgivable attack on your religion, imagine if the President of the United States decided to ban your faith from immigrating to the United States out of a strong, frequently voiced conviction that people like you are terrorists and murderers and crazed extremists out to destroy Western civilization with a religion of pure hate.
That, I would argue, would be substantially worse than not getting a “Merry Christmas” from department store clerks one hundred percent of the time.
Here’s the thing: I don’t particularly care if people wish me a Merry Christmas even though I’m Jewish and do not celebrate Christmas. Yes, it makes me feel invisible, like my faith and my religion do not exist and do not matter. But there are lots of things that make me fee invisible at Christmastime as a Jew, like the more or less total dearth of Chanukah-themed entertainment. Seriously. Y’all get It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol and A Charlie Brown Christmas. We get 8 Crazy Nights, a shittier and lazier than usual Adam Sandler vehicle.
But if you gentiles are so fragile and delicate in your faith that you need to say “Merry Christmas” to everyone in order to feel comfortable and safe in a country where you are a huge majority and hold most of the power, then have at it. Unlike you, I can handle my religious customs being ignored or actively denied.
Every November the “War on Christmas” contingent decides that Christians who celebrate Christmas, a group that has just about everything in terms of visibility, representation and power when it comes to the world not only acknowledging but vigorously celebrating its rituals, almost as if THE ENTIRE FUCKING AMERICAN ECONOMY IS DEPENDENT ON CHRISTMAS SPENDING, decides that the crumbs and scraps given to Christian and Muslim and atheists in the form of people sometimes acknowledging their existence and non-Christian faith are just too goddamn generous, and must be angrily denied.
These hypocrites pull a reverse Santa Claus. Those with everything take from those with almost nothing in the name of Jesus. I dunno, but that doesn’t seem very Christian to me.
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