Reply #15: The "War on Christmas" is an old story; Alito is the newest "holy warrior"

[Bridget Burke]

This 2003 essay from the Beverly LaHaye institute laments commercialization & "political correctness". At least this article considers the possibility of "true" Christians abandoning the holiday to Pagans, merchants (they're all Jews, you know) & less pure Christians (many of them already lost to Popery).

It's no mystery why merchants are seeing their bottom lines drop. Main Street Americans are getting the message — Christmas is just another day, after all. The crass advertising lures Christians to the stores; once there, their beliefs are trivialized; their Savior is ignored. Increasingly, clerks have been forbidden to acknowledge "the reason for the season" with a cheery "Merry Christmas." Instead the marketplaces ring with bland "Happy Holidays" — the mandatory, politically correct greeting.

www.beverlylahayeinstitute.org/articledisplay.asp?id=5047&department=BLI&categoryid=dotcommentary

Beverly (Mrs Tim "Left Behind") LaHaye also founded Concerned Women for America.

Robert H. Knight, director of the group's Culture and Family Institute, an in-house think tank, is among those who object to the use of nonspecific holiday greetings instead of "Merry Christmas." He says "millions of Americans are waking up to the fact that the phrase 'Happy Holidays' is less a happy greeting than a pointed assault on our civil liberties."

www.refuseandresist.org/culture/art.php?aid=1680

Salon found a far earlier example:

In 1959, the recently formed John Birch Society issued an urgent alert: Christmas was under attack. In a JBS pamphlet titled "THERE GOES CHRISTMAS?!," a writer named Hubert Kregeloh warned, "One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas -- to denude the event of its religious meaning." The central front in this perfidious assault was American department stores, where the "Godless UN" was scheming to replace religious decorations with internationalist celebrations of universal brotherhood.

www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/21/christmas/index_np.html

Recently, John Gibson wrote "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." Even those who gave it 5 stars admit to not having read it!

www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595230165/qid=1133886385/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-8003467-1033556?n=507846&s=books&v=glance