'War on Christmas' Nonsense is a War on Secularists

[marmar]

from Guardian UK's COmment is Free, via AlterNet:




'War on Christmas' Nonsense is a War on Secularists

By Polly Toynbee, Comment Is Free. Posted December 21, 2007.

Beneath the laughable charge is a poisonous suggestion that 'our way of life' is threatened by foreigners.




My thanks to the kind reader who sent me the program from this year's Christmas carol service at the Old Royal Naval College chapel in Greenwich. It was written by the Rev Jules Gomes, chaplain of the college, and of Trinity College of Music, and also of the University of Greenwich.

Here is the good chaplain's Christmas message: "More Christians have been martyred for their faith in the last century than in any other period of church history. Yesterday's Herod is today's Richard Dawkins and Polly Toynbee, seeking the total extermination of all forms of Christianity. The great irony is that the greatest opposition to Christ comes from so-called broad-minded people who seek to ban Christmas so that people of other faiths are not offended."

Yes, it is that time of year when secularists, atheists and humanists become the Grinches who stole Christmas. As an honorary associate of the National Secular Society and president of the British Humanist Association, here is my cue to offer you all a rattling good Christmas "Bah, humbug!" Except, of course, it's all utter nonsense. No one is out to ban Christmas or Christianity - not atheists nor other faiths. Yet every year the same urban myths are repeated about the banning of Christmas by some pantomime villain local authority suffering from "political correctness gone mad." King Rat Christmas wreckers are unearthed, and every year these turn out to be garbage stories, but they are stored in the attic for another airing next December.

I had at least five calls from broadcasters this year inviting me to say it would be a jolly good thing if Christmas were rebranded Winterval. That myth began years ago when Birmingham city council tried to spread the festive season across the long winter - though it never replaced Christmas, which came with official celebrations in the middle of it. But the Winterval myth lives on. This year it was joined by this: "God rest ye merry people all, Let nothing go to waste, So let us all this Decemberval, Recycle now with haste." Although written by a vicar for Warrington's Christmas recycling campaign, watch Decemberval enter anti-Christmas demonology. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/71320/

[Skidmore]

1. It's actually the rantings of a facist propaganda machine trying to

keep the skids greased.

[Jacobin]

2. As an atheist, I enjoy the pagan christian rituals

[earth mom]

3. Sure it is, but it's also, as was posted upthread, a fascist propaganda machine.

As a child of an Atheist & Agnostic, I consider myself an Agnostic and I feel like I've been at war figuratively with the religious Xian extremists my entire life. I can't tell you how many times they've tried to convert me to the Xian faith.

But knowing what I know about * Co, I'd say that the War on Xmas fits perfectly into their fascist propaganda machine.

Doesn't keep me from celebrating Santa Claus day though. :evilgrin:

[zbdent]

4. Liberals are people who belive that "Merry Christmas" should not be an

attack shouted at the top of your lungs ... they believe that there are more words that are important in the pledge, even when "UNDER GOD" is not shouted out ...

[Marrah_G]

5. The common and over use of the word "war" irritates the heck out of me

War is cruel and violent and nasty.

The media attaching "War on" to every damn topic is shameful.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. To be fair, the annual attacks on secularists is cruel and nasty

and not uncommonly violent.

[fascisthunter]

7. Exactly