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Thread ID: 11879 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-01-13
2004-01-13 14:19 | User Profile
January 19, 2004 issue Copyright é 2003 The American Conservative
How the Left Stole Christmas
Merry Birth of Guru Gobind Singh Day!
By Tom Piatak
óI am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come roundââ¬Â¹apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything can be apart from thatââ¬Â¹as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.ò
These words of Scroogeùs nephew describe Christmas in the America of my youth. Christmas was a special and wonderful time of year, marked by kindness and good cheer, with its myriad celebrations all viewed as ultimately stemming from the birth of the One who, in Dickensù words, ómade lame beggars walk and blind men see.ò
Todayùs consensus is different. In last yearùs made-for-cable movie óChristmas Rush,ò one character wishes another óMerry Christmas,ò only to be told, óGee, that is politically incorrect.ò And so it is. In one generationââ¬Â¹I was born in 1964ââ¬Â¹Christmas has gone from being a widespread and joyous public celebration to the holiday that dare not speak its name. We now have óholiday trees,ò óholiday cards,ò óholiday parties,ò óholiday songs,ò and even, in one particularly egregious advertisement, a óchildùs first holiday.ò Simply put, there is now raging a óWar Against Christmas,ò in author Peter Brimelowùs trenchant phrase.
A hallmark of this war is an aggressive multiculturalism that has elevated a variety of formerly obscure or even non-existent festivals into faux-Christmases, principally Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and now Ramadan, but also Diwali, Bodhi Day, the Birth of Guru Gobind Singh, Dongji, and Chinese New Year. The reason for the elevation of these holidays is their proximity to Christmas, not their cultural significance or intrinsic worth. Indeed, Kwanzaa was invented in 1966, Hanukkah is traditionally a minor holiday (with no basis in the canonical Hebrew Bible), and Ramadan was virtually unknown in America until a few short years ago. Despite their recent provenanceââ¬Â¹at least as pseudo-Christmasesââ¬Â¹these holidays are now treated as coequals of Christmas, with public figures sure to pepper any of the increasingly rare mentions of Christmas with references to at least some of these others.
The desire to efface Christmas that lies behind the elevation of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and all the rest is illustrated by recent developments in the New York City public schools. The Thomas More Law Center is now suing the school system, which bans Nativity scenes but regularly display menorahs and Muslim crescents. Nor are the schools trying to rectify this now that their hostility to Christianity has been put in the spotlight. Instead, they are vigorously defending the ban, claiming that the ósuggestion that a crèche is a historically accurate representation of an event with secular significance is wholly disingenuous.ò The birth of the most important figure in history carries no weight in New York City, nor does the fact that the birth was first depicted in a crèche by another seminal historical figure, an itinerant friar from Assisi named Francis. It does not take a belief in the divinity of Christ or the sanctity of Francis to recognize their tremendous impact on the history and culture of the West. Apparently, though, the multiculturalists are eager to promote every culture but our own.
That the war against Christmas is part of a broader war against Western culture is shown by last yearùs winner of VDARE.comùs invaluable War Against Christmas competition. The Columbus, Ohio, schools banned a performance of Handelùs Messiah, which for the previous nine years had been the highlight of the year at a specialized school for the arts. The performance would have violated the districtùs religious-music policy, which came into being as the result of an ACLU lawsuit. According to the Columbus Dispatch, the policy stipulated that the proportion of religious music performed in concert be no more than 30 percent and that the performance of religious music be óbased on sound curricular reasonsò and not ómanifest a preference for religion or particular religious beliefs.ò The educational bureaucrats who devised the policy, trying to be helpful, suggested the students perform óFrosty the Snowmanò or óJingle Bellsò instead of Handel. Their ignorance and philistinism is appalling, though characteristic of those waging the War Against Christmas. After hearing Messiah performed in London, Haydn was moved to exclaim, óHandel is the master of us all!ò and to write his own great oratorio, The Creation. But, in todayùs climate of ósensitivityò and ótolerance,ò beauty and artistic merit are scarcely a sufficient warrant for exposing delicate ears to the name of Christ.
The transformation of Christmas to óholidayò and the attendant impoverishment of our culture was brought about to accommodate not the small minority of Americans who do not celebrate Christmas but the far smaller minorityââ¬Â¹comprising those of all faiths and of noneââ¬Â¹who resent the overwhelming majority who do celebrate Christmas. In my experience, most non-Christians do not resent Christmas and generally enjoy some aspects of its celebration. This sentiment was well expressed by Philadelphia Inquirer editor Jane Eisnerùs thoughtful and generous essay of December 2002, in which she explained why, as a Jew, she was bothered by the suppression of Christmas and ó[t]he conflation of Christmas, Hanukkah, and now Kwanzaa à  into one big, fat indistinguishable holiday.ò
But the transformation of Christmas into óholidayò would not have occurred without a dedicated, active minority who resented and despised it. An upcoming film on the art-house circuit, called óThe Hebrew Hammer,ò a spoof of blaxploitation films, features the filmùs eponymous hero and his sidekick, the head of the Kwanzaa Liberation Front, battling the filmùs villains, the sons of Santa Claus and Tiny Tim. Among the villainsù acts of treachery: distributing videos of óItùs A Wonderful Life,ò one of the greatest of all American movies and the favorite picture of both Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart. Judging from the filmùs Web site, it appears that óThe Hebrew Hammerò at least has the potential to be funny. But the reasons for its making are not. As the filmùs director, Jonathan Kesselman, told the LA Jewish Journal, óI asked myself, à âWhat as a Jew really pisses me off?ù It hit me when I was walking around a mall in December: I hate Christmastime.ò
This Christmas, though, you wonùt have to go to an art house to see a film inspired by disdain for Christmas. Disney is observing the holiday by releasing (through its Miramax subsidiary) another alleged comedy, óBad Santa.ò This movieùs Santa figure is shown being a drunk and having sex, is heard by other characters having anal sex, and repeatedly swears in front of children. According to the Chicago Tribuneùs John Kass, Disney is promoting this charming film with advertisements on TV featuring óa veiled reference to oral sex and an unmistakable reference to feminine hygieneò at timesââ¬Â¹such as during Sunday afternoon football gamesââ¬Â¹when it would be reasonable to expect children to watch them. As Kass archly observes, óAbout the only thing that Santa is forbidden to do these days is mention the real reason that gifts are given in late December.ò
The whole point of óBad Santaò is to mock and demean Christmas. The filmùs boosters say as much. George Thomas, of the Akron Beacon Journal, wrote in early November, óThe trailer shows this as an anti-holiday film and it could be the much needed antidote to that good-will-to-man feeling that permeates the season.ò It goes without saying that the great Walt Disney would never have made such a film, but neither would any of the other major studios in Hollywoodùs golden age. They were busy instead making such delightful films as óItùs a Wonderful Life,ò óThe Bells of St. Maryùsò (the film playing in Bedford Falls as George Bailey runs down its snowy streets on Christmas Eve), óThe Bishopùs Wife,ò and óMiracle on 34th Street.ò The journey from óMiracle on 34th Streetò to óBad Santaò is downhill all the way.
Kesselman has the same right to óhate Christmastimeò as the rest of us do to love it, but it makes no sense to transform our culture and jettison beloved and popular traditions to appease such hatred. The malcontents and misfits who have litigated and complained to prevent such horrors as children learning how to sing óSilent Nightò should not be allowed to set our course. What is needed, instead, is true tolerance, a recognition that the point of celebrating a holiday is just thatââ¬Â¹celebrationââ¬Â¹and the intent of those doing the celebrating is not to demean those who donùt. As Jane Eisner wrote, óSomehow we have to learn to coexist without calling in lawyers and initiating merger talks. We have to recognize the strength and distinctiveness of each celebration, and not force equality by pretending à âI Had a Little Dreidelù is on par with the heavenly melodies of Christmas carols.ò
I first began thinking about this while driving to my parentsù in Michigan several years ago to celebrate Christmas. Even though I was driving on Dec. 23, I could not find Christmas music on any American radio station. Then I came across CBC 2, which was carrying nothing but Christmas music and whose announcers were regularly wishing their listeners a Merry Christmas. Their programming featured both familiar Christmas music and some gems in the seemingly inexhaustible treasury of beautiful Christmas music I had not heard before: Anne Sofie von Otter singing lovely Swedish carols, Charpentierùs beautiful Mass for Midnight, with its generous borrowing from French carols, and Praetoriusùs stunning Mass for Christmas Morning. The sheer beauty of the music brought home what we are in danger of losing. And that the proudly tolerant Canadians were playing such music led me to wonder why we are, instead, sanitizing our culture of any reference to Christmas.
Rather than strip the altars, we used to try to add to all the beauty surrounding Christmas, the work done earlier by Giotto, Bach, Dickens, Charpentier, Praetorius, and the village priest and organist who collaborated to give us óSilent Night.ò Although not quite on this level, Hollywoodùs classic Christmas films have stood the test of time and are still being watched and enjoyed nearly 60 years after they were made. More recently, carols such as óThe Little Drummer Boyò and cartoons such as óA Charlie Brown Christmasò have enchanted us, and they still do, nearly 40 years later. We no longer make such contributions, as the focus of the Christmas season is no longer the positive one of celebrating a shared tradition but the negative one of pretending that tradition does not exist, so as not to offend those who do not share it.
The result of sanitizing Christmas is now within sight: an undistinguished, uninspiring public celebration, devoid of religious or cultural significance or indeed of beauty, with nothing left but multiculturalist pap and tawdry commercialism. I do not believe that grim fate is inevitable. But that future will indeed be ours if we remain so unnerved by the thought of giving offense to those looking for a reason to be offended that we are afraid to celebrate our own culture, tradition, and religion.
Tom Piatak writes from Cleveland, Ohio.
January 19, 2004 issue Copyright é 2003 The American Conservative
2004-01-13 15:50 | User Profile
Gosh, maybe that story should be re-titled, "How the Right Gave Away Christmas"
B/c that's what happened.