War on Christmas...2012

[Nick]

To be fiar the War on Christmas really does not start until Bill O'Really kicks it off.  I have not heard of him mentioning it yet.

[Mr. Blackwell]

Is it the general consensus of the members of this forum that there actually IS a war on Christmas?

Or is it just made up by Christians?

[Nick]

Is it the general consensus of the members of this forum that there actually IS a war on Christmas?

Or is it just made up by Christians?

Is this a trick question?

[Mr. Blackwell]

Is this a trick question?

No...did I word it weird or is it just an absurd question?

[Nick]

There is no war on Christmas and has not been.  As the country has become more diverse the "right" feels threatened and the need to push their values on the rest of us (so you get mangers on public grounds, etc.).  Stores forced to say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays or get a boycott.  Shit like that.

[Mr. Blackwell]

Oh...well, what's wrong with boycotting?

[on:bread:alone]

Oh...well, what's wrong with boycotting?

we have to be more proactive. for about four years running, a group of friends and i hi-jacked every baby jesus from every manger scene in the county. we made the paper three of those four years. i still have the clippings. we used paintballs and BB guns to destroy any and all religious decorations. (we also painted the stolen baby jes.. jesuses? jesi? ...what the fuck is the plural of "jesus?!?" ...anyways, we painted them up like linda blair, drove nails through their little hands and feet, attached wings from dead crows, basically made whatever improvements we could and on xmas eve, we would leave them on the doorsteps of our friends... as presents). w2e declared war on christmas, but unfortunately we were forced to resign from our harmless acts of social terrorism when the police got involved.

[madeline]

I really don't mind Christmas other than the religious parts, the commercialization of it, the enormous expense of it, the overwhelming feeling that I must spend more than I can afford and the terrible songs that I must endure every time I step into a store...other than that I like the pretty lights...

[Mr. Blackwell]

Oh...well, what's wrong with boycotting?

we have to be more proactive. for about four years running, a group of friends and i hi-jacked every baby jesus from every manger scene in the county. we made the paper three of those four years. i still have the clippings. we used paintballs and BB guns to destroy any and all religious decorations. (we also painted the stolen baby jes.. jesuses? jesi? ...what the fuck is the plural of "jesus?!?" ...anyways, we painted them up like linda blair, drove nails through their little hands and feet, attached wings from dead crows, basically made whatever improvements we could and on xmas eve, we would leave them on the doorsteps of our friends... as presents). w2e declared war on christmas, but unfortunately we were forced to resign from our harmless acts of social terrorism when the police got involved.

Well that's great and all but it doesn't even attempt to answer my question, which you quoted.

Nick observed that part of the problem is that Christians will boycott stores that refuse to say "Merry Christmas".

I was asking, "what's wrong with boycotting?"

[on:bread:alone]

i'm sorry. when i said "we have to be more proactive," i meant boycotting just simply isn't enough. you can refuse to buy from stores based on the religious implications of their decorations, but in the end i don't think it will make enough of a difference.... people on the whole are indifferent, we've been programmed to regard xmas as a religious holiday, and it seems the religious still outnumber the non-religious... so ultimately, for every light bulb you don't buy, some other yahoo will.

so boycotting is a good start, but i think that a voice needs to be made heard. but that's just me, and really, i happen to like xmas (apart from all the religious crap). presents and such. good times.

[Nick]

The term "happy holidays" takes in all the celebrations at this time of year.  Seems logical in a multicultural society.  Christians insist that their day get mentioned and f*ck the others.  That is why boycotts are silly as far as this situation is concerned.

[Mr. Blackwell]

i'm sorry. when i said "we have to be more proactive," i meant boycotting just simply isn't enough. you can refuse to buy from stores based on the religious implications of their decorations, but in the end i don't think it will make enough of a difference.... people on the whole are indifferent, we've been programmed to regard xmas as a religious holiday, and it seems the religious still outnumber the non-religious... so ultimately, for every light bulb you don't buy, some other yahoo will.

so boycotting is a good start, but i think that a voice needs to be made heard. but that's just me, and really, i happen to like xmas (apart from all the religious crap). presents and such. good times.

I thought that might be where you were coming from but I wasn't certain. Even so, Nick was still lamenting that boycotting was bad...at least when done so by Christians. You went on to describe more proactive activities one could undertake in an effort to voice their disagreement. You apparently feel more needs to be done in the effort to voice ones disagreement with certain points of view.

Meh...I don't know how far you are willing to go, personally, to protest one idea over another but after severing the wings of dead birds and attaching them to baby Jesus then offering them as anonymous gifts to your friends...I don't want to be your enemy 

Anyway, for me it's not the religious aspect of Christmas that bothers me. It's the commercialization and the Santa clause factor that peeves me the most. Plus, I hate most Christmas music.

Personally, I could care less whether a greeter at the store, or the cashier or whatever, greets me with Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays or nothing at all. I rarely pay attention to such trivial aspects of my shopping experience. 

[on:bread:alone]

oh, that gave me a chuckle!   

btw, mr. blackwell, i rather enjoy your signature.

[Nam]

Too true, Nick. Too true.

-Nam

[Jag]

I can't figure out what christians are really talking about when I hear about the "War on Christmas" (in my head, this is stated in a deep resonating  voice, with proper emphasis on each word and a clash of thunder). Yes, there's the obvious "Happy Holidays" versus "Merry Christmas", but that hardly constitutes a war.

Sometime in the last year or two, there was a video on YouTube featuring a woman wandering around a big box store peering at shelves, and looking behind displays, saying "where's jesus?" toward the camera, over and over.

While I was watching the video, I kept thinking she was completely missing the mark. Retail businesses exist to sell things to consumers for the expressed and explicit purpose of making a profit. It's in the best interest of a retail business to only stock items that are likely to sell. If there's a lack of "jesus" in the store, that should indicate that there is likely an absence of buyers in the store's target demographic to support the sale of such items. And what, exactly, would such items actually be?

Who would be looking in a retail store to find jesus?

That right there is what makes me completely impatient with the whole "war on christmas" crap. If Christians want to "take back christmas", what does that mean? What outcome are they after? Who is waging this so-called war? What are they trying to accomplish? Walmart should be converted to Jesus-Mart? What stock will they carry? Bibles and crucifixes? Pope hats and hymnals? Chocolate covered marshmallow Jesus on a popsicle stick?

I can't speak for the entire country, but it's not very difficult here to find retail stores that self identify as christian - there's a christian bookstore just a few miles from my house (in the suburbs in Minnesota), and several others with a similar targeted audience. Christians certainly have other options for places to spend their retail dollars on christian items.

What is it they are demanding be protected in this war? Can they even identify it if asked?

[pianodwarf]

I can't figure out what christians are really talking about when I hear about the "War on Christmas".

As is so often the case with this type of complaint, what they are really talking about (although they typically don't know it) is that they have been enjoying Christian Privilege.  Attempts to include people of other faiths, or of no faith at all, is an attack on that privilege, and Christians know it.  The problem is that they believe that attack on their privilege is actually an attack on their rights or on their religion itself.  It isn't.

Yes, there's the obvious "Happy Holidays" versus "Merry Christmas", but that hardly constitutes a war.

To many of them, it actually is.

[Hatter23]

Oh...well, what's wrong with boycotting?

The action? Nothing at all. A very legitimate tool of coersion from a legal and ethical standpoint.

It is the reason for the boycott, to undermine attempts at inclusivity. To try and make it mandatory that an action as secular as commerce to include exclusive religious statements.

To illustrate the situation, lets say  a town had a 75% Muslim population.  Some of the Muslim Mullahs told there parishoners to refuse to go to any store that didn't have the cashiers go "Praise Allah, the one and only God" to every customer...then portrayed any resistance to this as "A War on Islam."


Then say:

Oh...well, what's wrong with boycotting?

[Jag]

@ pianodwarf, I'm not sure that I agree, at least not entirely. Yes, it's christian privilege, but I think it's mostly knee-jerk more than anything else. Maybe my perspective isn't a good representation of the wider world (or the wider America), because most of my acquaintances are not "strong" believers, they're more of the habitual type. Few attend church with any regularity.

I think for a lot of people, it's like an internet meme. "Everyone" is saying it, so it must be true, or relevant, or whatever. And then there's the mistaken understanding about the purpose of using the term "Happy Holidays" to replace "Merry Christmas" - what I always read or hear is that it's supposed to avoid offending people who are not christian, as opposed to an effort to include those people in the well wishes.

Every time I saw that nonsense on FB last year, I very politely pointed out the difference between the two positions, and asked why it's an offense to extend holiday greetings to everyone in a way that makes no assumptions about anyone's beliefs, but instead simply wished them all well, regardless of what religious traditions they follow. Not a single person was an ass in response, and a few people even stated that they hadn't thought of it in those terms.

Now, I'm not kidding myself that I started some sort of revolution, but I really do think that for many, many people, it's just a convenient bandwagon to jump on board. When pushed to reflect just a little bit, they may reconsider, or at least stop saying something so stupid.

Or maybe I'm completely in the wrong about this and I just happen to be very lucky to not live where I'd be surrounded by the crazy.

And I still don't understand why anyone would be looking for jesus at Walmart.

[nogodsforme]

No Christians have been banned from any stores, but when some Christians see all that nasty acceptance of other people, they get their holy underwear all in a twist. The issue here is that some Christians are used to ruling the commercial and public universe. They are surprised and hurt that they no longer do.

In the good old days, anyone who was not Christian was ashamed to crawl out of the hut to forage for food. Christians used to wait outside the huts with tennis rackets to beat the infidels back into their holes. So nowadays when the government has given non-Christians actual jobs that pay money, they have the affrontery to want to go shopping in places that make them feel welcome.
 
I encounter lots of stores with Christian merchandise, even one that sells only Catholic-specific merchandise, just to nuns I guess, from the clientele I have seen shopping there. (A pretty small demographic, but it stays in business somehow.)[1]

There is a Christian Family Superstore or some such with two outlets within a few miles of my house. I am sure that there is no shortage of places where people can buy all the Jesus they want. Not to mention the interwebs.

And there are plenty of places where people can still say Merry Christmas and view creches and talk about Jesus all the time during the holidays. I think they are called "homes", and "churches".

1.	To be honest, they have recently begun marketing to the burgeoning latino Catholic market, with new signs in espanol. Vewy schmart.

[Nam]

Don't forget, they even have their own porn, too.

-Nam

[Dominic]

I really don't mind Christmas other than the religious parts, the commercialization of it, the enormous expense of it, the overwhelming feeling that I must spend more than I can afford and the terrible songs that I must endure every time I step into a store...other than that I like the pretty lights...

[madeline]

Thanks Dominic! 

[nogodsforme]

There's an engineer in our neighborhood who does this! It's an amazing X-mas display coordinating music on a radio station with lights and colors. He has taken over the entire cul de sac and expanded out into the neighboring yards (I assume with permission).

During December there are ten or more cars sitting and watching. We always stop by of an evening to catch a few songs. Every year he adds more lights. He must spend thousands of dollars on this out of his own pocket--he has a donation bucket but the collections from visitors are for charity.

He is probably a Christian-- I wonder if he knows that decorating your house with lights is a carryover from the pagan winter solstice celebrations?

[Nick]

You should set up a hotdog and hot coco stand.

[Mr. Blackwell]

Oh...well, what's wrong with boycotting?

The action? Nothing at all. A very legitimate tool of coersion from a legal and ethical standpoint.

It is the reason for the boycott, to undermine attempts at inclusivity. To try and make it mandatory that an action as secular as commerce to include exclusive religious statements.

To illustrate the situation, lets say  a town had a 75% Muslim population.  Some of the Muslim Mullahs told there parishoners to refuse to go to any store that didn't have the cashiers go "Praise Allah, the one and only God" to every customer...then portrayed any resistance to this as "A War on Islam."


Then say:

Oh...well, what's wrong with boycotting?

Well I apologize for not understanding it that way before...thank you.

[Mr. Blackwell]

There's an engineer in our neighborhood who does this! It's an amazing X-mas display coordinating music on a radio station with lights and colors. He has taken over the entire cul de sac and expanded out into the neighboring yards (I assume with permission).

During December there are ten or more cars sitting and watching. We always stop by of an evening to catch a few songs. Every year he adds more lights. He must spend thousands of dollars on this out of his own pocket--he has a donation bucket but the collections from visitors are for charity.

He is probably a Christian-- I wonder if he knows that decorating your house with lights is a carryover from the pagan winter solstice celebrations?

Is it an FM station? I ask because it would be waaaay to easy to sabatoge that whole event if one were so inclined. For about $20 one can purchase an FM transmitter and plug it into their mp3/4 player with Slayer programed into it and just tune it in to whatever FM station your engineer is playing and viola! Everyone within a 20-30 ft radius is watching the christmas lights dance to "Raining Blood".

There are also ways to boost your FM signal output.

Enjoy!

[nogodsforme]

It is an FM station. Hmmmmm.

I'd maybe start off with the Slayer, then "Sympathy for the Devil", then Billy Idol's "White Wedding", then Bare Naked's "Green Christmas" then blast some "Baby got Back" and end with some Islamic Sufi meditation music....

Can anyone tell who is jamming the station? Don't want a pissed off Christian nerd targeting any Star Wars missiles at my house....

[Nam]

You should do Nile. Constant barage of drumming. Awesome.

-Nam

[nogodsforme]

My daughter recommends blasting "NIB" by Black Sabbath. That should lively up the holiday visitors.

I wonder if anyone has ever decorated their house and played non-Christmas or even anti-Christmas music? It just seems so awesome, I can't imagine nobody has thought of it before.