War Against Christmas 2004 Competition [XIV]: Reason vs. Reality

Reason Declares War Against Christmas Nonexistent! [James Fulford]

Julian Sanchez , Assistant Editor at Reason magazine, [send him mail] has written a War-On-The-War-On-The-War-On-Christmas-piece. Or perhaps an Anti-Anti-Anti-Christmas article.

Sanchez claims that the War on Christmas is non-existent, that Christians, being after all the majority, rule the country, and that we're "kvetching" "bristling", et cetera.

“While unusually visible this year, the panic over a War on Christmas is part of a more general persecution complex shared by some conservative Christians, which seems at least as strange as the minority-party style rage evidenced at this summer's Republican National Convention by people who now control every branch of government.”

But later in the article, the non-existent War Against Christmas rematerializes as a sinister Christian plot:

“Since ‘special rights’ has been a term of aspersion among conservatives for decades, would-be theocrats have at least the decency to be too ashamed to demand them explicitly. Instead, they've learned the power of the victim narrative, of framing the debate to cast themselves as underdogs. Rather than attempting to entrench their values, demagogues purport to be playing defense against a plot to ‘purge religion from the public square,’ trading on the same ambiguity in the word ‘public’ that has eased the acceptance of ever more regulation of privately owned establishments that are open to the public…More importantly, moderate Christians with no desire to impose their faith on others might be convinced to support a re-Christianization of public life on the premise that they'd only be defending themselves against marauding secularists.” [The True Spirit of Xmas | How 4/5 of the country became an oppressed minority, December 20, 2004]

This kind of thing actually cheers me up. I like thinking that I'm secretly powerful, in the spirit of this old joke, by Stefan Sharkansky.

But the truth is somewhat different, see for example the work of the Thomas More Law Center, the Rutherford Institute, or Wallbuilders.Com.

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More Mainstream Mentions Of Nonexistent War Against Christmas [Peter Brimelow]

The Jewish Grinch Who Stole Christmas, by Burt Prelutsky, WordNetDaily, December 17, 2004

A Jew Says Merry Christmas, by Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, December 19, 2004.

Say “Merry Christmas” While You Can, by Mark Steyn, Daily Telegraph (U.K.), December 21, 2004

Do They Know It’s Christmas? Time To Unite And Save A Lovely Holiday, by Celia Farber, New York Press.

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