One Christmas, Under God, With Fries, Hold the Drama
For years now, whenever someone argued that the insertion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or “In God We Trust” on dollar bills was a violation of separation of church and state, there have always been people who’d jump in with comments like “What’s the big deal?”, “Get a life”, “Aren’t there more important things to worry about?”, “So just don’t say the `under God’ part”, and so on.
Now some retailers, in an effort to make as much money as possible during the various end-of-year holidays — and I hope you won’t think me overly cynical for thinking that a company like Lowe’s or Target is motivated more by profit than anything else — have been writing “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” on their bannners, flyers, and ads. And right-wingers like Bill O’Reilly and the American Family Association are getting their knickers in a twist.
I think this is the part where I get to tell them to get a life, and what’s the big deal, anyway?
Not that long ago, in 1958, Stan Freberg released Green Chri$tma$, which railed against the commercialization of Christmas (“Haven’t you forgotten whose birthday it is we’re celebrating?”). And remember this line from 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas?:
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you this day is born in the City of Bethlehem, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men'”. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie brown.
So for years, Christians had been complaining that Christmas was turning into a commercial holiday instead of a religious one. Now the wingnuts are complaining that retailers aren’t paying enough attention to it.
Lest we forget, Christmas is an amalgam of traditions looted borrowed from many sources, usually to make Christianity more palatable to whomever Christians were proselytizing to at the time (you know how some churches have “Autumn celebrations” because they don’t like Halloween? Same deal). Celebrating Christmas was forbidden in Massachusetts from 1659 to 1681, and wasn’t widely celebrated in New England until the mid-19th century. It didn’t even become a federal holiday until after the Civil War.
So quit your whining and get over it, okay?