Spoilers: It was the Christians.
It was in the 1960s that the conservative Christian world, while screaming about Christian values, wove the cross into the flag, glued God to alleged ‘family values’ and attached Christ to an aggressive foreign policy, American exceptionalism and a suspicion of all that was not “like us.”
An ugly coalition of right-wing Catholics, militant evangelicals, Fox News, Republicans, elements of the ‘new right’ in Canada, and various influential Canadian blogs and personalities has produced an implosion. Whether they knew it or not, whether they cared or not, they’ve allowed a genuine war on Christmas to take place. A war not against greeting cards and carol singing but against the quintessential virtues that are at the heart of the Christmas message.
For those of us who believe, those virtues are forgiveness, compassion, social justice, economic fairness, stewardship of the planet, care for the marginalized, empathy with the despised, a stale world turned upside down. A baby born in occupied Palestine 2,000 years ago grows up to give the ultimate answers, before being executed by the rulers — the wealthy, the privileged, the conservative and those terrified of change and revolution.
It has long mystified me that a religion so tied to the poor and the powerless should have become — in North America in particular — so linked to the rich and the powerful. During the Christmas season that jarring reality becomes all the more obvious and disturbing.
People like to say (and a rock group once sang it) that they wish it could be Christmas every day. I agree. But what sort of Christmas? The Christmas it was supposed to have been, or the one it has become? The Christmas of suburban indifference hiding in the politics of Donald Trump and Kellie Leitch, or a Christmas layered in the teachings of the man whose birth it’s supposed to celebrate?
Enjoy the holidays, and try to remember not only the people of Syria, Iraq and Egypt — and the vast majority of the world’s population who live in conditions we could and would never tolerate — but also the forgotten and broken in our own country. They’re the very people that baby was born to remind us of.
Who really declared war on Christmas?
It was in the 1960s that the conservative Christian world, while screaming about Christian values, wove the cross into the flag, glued God to alleged ‘family values’ and attached Christ to an aggressive foreign policy, American exceptionalism and a suspicion of all that was not “like us.”
An ugly coalition of right-wing Catholics, militant evangelicals, Fox News, Republicans, elements of the ‘new right’ in Canada, and various influential Canadian blogs and personalities has produced an implosion. Whether they knew it or not, whether they cared or not, they’ve allowed a genuine war on Christmas to take place. A war not against greeting cards and carol singing but against the quintessential virtues that are at the heart of the Christmas message.
For those of us who believe, those virtues are forgiveness, compassion, social justice, economic fairness, stewardship of the planet, care for the marginalized, empathy with the despised, a stale world turned upside down. A baby born in occupied Palestine 2,000 years ago grows up to give the ultimate answers, before being executed by the rulers — the wealthy, the privileged, the conservative and those terrified of change and revolution.
It has long mystified me that a religion so tied to the poor and the powerless should have become — in North America in particular — so linked to the rich and the powerful. During the Christmas season that jarring reality becomes all the more obvious and disturbing.
People like to say (and a rock group once sang it) that they wish it could be Christmas every day. I agree. But what sort of Christmas? The Christmas it was supposed to have been, or the one it has become? The Christmas of suburban indifference hiding in the politics of Donald Trump and Kellie Leitch, or a Christmas layered in the teachings of the man whose birth it’s supposed to celebrate?
Enjoy the holidays, and try to remember not only the people of Syria, Iraq and Egypt — and the vast majority of the world’s population who live in conditions we could and would never tolerate — but also the forgotten and broken in our own country. They’re the very people that baby was born to remind us of.
Who really declared war on Christmas?
