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War on Christmas

Discussion in 'Tilted Philosophy, Politics, and Economics' started by redux, Nov 22, 2012.

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  1. redux

    redux Very Tilted

    Location:
    Foggy Bottom


    Every good secularist knows that you don't start the War on Christmas until Black Friday.

    Is there really a War on Christmas?

    Christmas in the only religious federal holiday in the US.

    Earlier and earlier in November, Christmas trees and decorations are everywhere, Christmas songs dominate the radio. Christmas movies are all over Cable TV.

    As a Jew, none of this bothers me in the least and I find some of it to be festive.

    So where is this War?

    Private businesses choosing to wish Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas? Their choice.

    Highly religious displays in front or city halls or courthouse? Yep, I have a problem with that. Keep it to a Christmas tree and its all good.

    This Fox and religious right war has one purpose – ratings/fund raising.

    I say “bah humbug” to this self-serving war. What say you?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 22, 2012
    redux, Nov 22, 2012
    #1
    • Like Like x 4
  2. fflowley

    fflowley Don't just do something, stand there!

    The War on Christmas is an idiotic creation of the Fox News crowd.
    I find the war on scientific, rational thought waged there on a daily basis to be much more concerning.
     
    fflowley, Nov 23, 2012
    #2
    • Like Like x 2
  3. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    My problem with the idea of a "War on Christmas" (I'll set aside my thoughts on Christmas celebration in general...for now) is that many who decry it seem to make a number of assumptions.

    The first assumption is that Christmas is a holiday to be publicly celebrated based on it being a holiday ingrained in wider society. The second is that Christianity is the de facto "official religion" in society. The third is that Christmas and what Christian celebrate it for are indisputable facts taken as givens. We should all celebrate Christmas because everything we have was made possible because of Jesus.

    Now all this doesn't apply to all or most Christians, I'm sure, but I get the sense this is what is assumed by most who decry some war on Christmas. They are offended that their holiday should be relegated or pared back to the private sphere.

    That they are offended by this frustrates me.

    Think of it from the perspective of other beliefs and faiths. Do other faiths (or atheists) honestly appreciate having Christian mythology foisted upon them? I'm not talking about jingle bells, mistletoe, and carols necessarily, but things like nativity scenes and Jesus worship symbolism (and even angels and the like) placed everywhere in public. "Baby Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, is come," "hallelujah!" kind of shit. Government buildings (schools included) I think should especially be off limits when it comes to that kind of stuff.

    Also, think of the inverse. How would a lot of these Americans react if Mawlid (birth of the Prophet) became a Big Deal like Christmas? Large celebratory parades, decorations (maybe just of Mosques and homes, maybe not), stories of Muhammad's life and Muslim poetry read to children in schools during their "Mawlid concerts," Islamic music played on the radio days in advance, Islamic music played in public, stars and crescents pasted everywhere, etc. How would they react? They would go APE. FUCKING. SHIT. But they wouldn't be doing it because anything were taken away. No, they would lose it because people had the audacity to publicly celebrate something and make others put up with it even though these others don't believe in (at best) or oppose it (at worst).

    It's interesting, isn't it?

    There's no war on Christmas. It's a disarmament.
     
    Baraka_Guru, Nov 23, 2012
    #3
    • Like Like x 1
  4. mixedmedia

    mixedmedia ...

    Location:
    Florida
    The War on Christmas is so 2008. I thought they had gone back to defending against the War on Bland Anglo-Saxon Heterosexual Men and the things that they do.
     
    mixedmedia, Nov 23, 2012
    #4
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  5. Borla

    Borla Moderator Staff Member

    I knew all along that you were out to get me.
     
    Borla, Nov 23, 2012
    #5
    • Like Like x 1
  6. mixedmedia

    mixedmedia ...

    Location:
    Florida
    I will not rest until all of you motherfuckers know how to dance and put together a stylish, yet jaunty ensemble.
     
    mixedmedia, Nov 23, 2012
    #6
    • Like Like x 6
  7. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    Show me the way.
     
    Plan9, Nov 23, 2012
    #7
    • Like Like x 1
  8. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    I have a feeling this will lead to Plan9 wearing a three-piece custom-tailored suit topped with a Homburg at a jaunty angle.
     
    Baraka_Guru, Nov 23, 2012
    #8
    • Like Like x 1
  9. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    Imagine a three piece suit with an Operation Ivy t-shirt, one of those trouser belts made out of an old car seat belt and some really glossy paratrooper boots... topped with a gray ushanka and some aviator sunglasses?

    So. Much. Class.

    ...

    Mild threadjack follows:

    If nothing else, I see the War on Christmas with the Christmas side winning. Seriously. Every year it seems that it starts just a little earlier. Example: I was taunted by repetitive X-mas tunes on the car radio on 12 November, I watched my neighbors put up multi-colored lights on the 15th and the day before fucking Thanksgiving I was literally tripping over people raiding the red-and-green aisles at Target like maybe they didn't have an entire fucking month to go still. So, yeah, Fox News and Team White Jesus Birth is winning, folks. BUY MORE SHIT and BUY IT SOONER. Hell, Black Friday / Cyber Monday are the new holiday. We'll be rushing about to secure LED-infused garland and put cheap Chinese plastic toys for the kids on layaway in fucking August of 2013 at this rate. I remember when holidays were celebrated on or about the actual holiday instead of this multiple-holidays-at-once shopping-and-travel-extravaganza mania that so many folks have allowed forced down their throats.

    Bah! Humbug!

    /Capitalcommerciomaterlificiation'd!

    And people wonder why I volunteer to work throughout the holidays.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2012
    Plan9, Nov 23, 2012
    #9
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  10. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    If there is an actual war on Christmas, the important front to focus on is the appropriation of the holiday by marketing and commercialism, turning it into "The Holidays." This is all that extra crap that has little to do with celebrating the birth of a god. The enemy of Christmas isn't secularization as a whole or even atheism. That's too general, too vague. The enemy is this practice of hypermaterialism.

    If Christians want to hold the hill, they're going to have to know what enemy is really marching up it.

    Christ, I'll just post a flowchart:

    CHRISTMAS: Hold the line!

    Saturnalia > Sol Invictus > Mōdraniht > Yuletide > [a crapload of winter solstice observances] > Christmas > The Holidays

    Jesus, it's like America losing its mind at the thought of not being #1 in the world. Here's the thing: You weren't always #1....
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2012
    Baraka_Guru, Nov 23, 2012
    #10
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  11. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    You have no idea how much I genuinely appreciate your blurbs and rants here on TFP. Seriously.

    /your use of "Christ!" and "Jesus!" was also brilliant
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2012
    Plan9, Nov 23, 2012
    #11
    • Like Like x 2
  12. roachboy

    roachboy Very Tilted

    i wish there was a war on xmas. i like to think i would be consulted on the uniforms. they would be quite jaunty.
     
    roachboy, Nov 23, 2012
    #12
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  13. Xerxes

    Xerxes Bulking.

    War on "x" = YOU MUST CARE ABOUT WHAT I CARE ABOUT!

    It's bullshit. I want to head a campaign called war on anti-intellectualism. I want people to know that it is neither allright to be incurious nor ignorant. I want people to stop being so damned fanatic about abstract nonesense and employ the same furor to things that actually matter. Let not those who pander to your false sense of domestic modesty sway you from important topics like the economy or your wellfare. Do not be so keen to listen to the likes of Hannity who want only to sell airtime.

    What the fuck is wrong with everyone? When did we lose focus on important events so terribly that we now care about warring on Christmas? A pagan holiday that symbolizes the epitome of capitalistic avirice? When the fuck will the society at large grow up?
     
    Xerxes, Nov 23, 2012
    #13
  14. rogue49

    rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

    Location:
    Baltimore/DC
    Don't worry, be happy
    Have fun, be merry
    Enjoy family

    That's what the holidays are about.
    And if you like decorations, light it up.

    Why do certain people feel like there needs to be rules to everything???
    Happy Holidays. (all of them)
     
    rogue49, Nov 23, 2012
    #14
    • Like Like x 4
  15. Joniemack

    Joniemack Beta brainwaves in session

    Location:
    Reading, UK
    The war on Christmas started when the Christians stole Yule.
     
    Joniemack, Nov 23, 2012
    #15
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  16. Joniemack

    Joniemack Beta brainwaves in session

    Location:
    Reading, UK
    Because Christianity cannot exist without the occasional reminder that it's followers are a persecuted lot.
     
    Joniemack, Nov 24, 2012
    #16
  17. Fremen

    Fremen Allright, who stole my mustache?

    Location:
    E. Texas
    Christmas.....Island of Misfit Toys....Christmas Island.....war.....bombs....Bikini Island....bikinis....girls.....war!
    What is it good for? Good God, y'all!
    [​IMG]
     
    Fremen, Nov 24, 2012
    #17
    • Like Like x 3
  18. redux

    redux Very Tilted

    Location:
    Foggy Bottom
    Yes Virginia, there is a war on Christmas.

    [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
    redux, Nov 24, 2012
    #18
    • Like Like x 2
  19. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    I know, right?! It's why so many middle class white guys in the NoVA have a concealed carry permit: To protect them from rabid obese middle-aged housewives.

    /gun trollin'

    ...

    I think this is the funniest thing you've posted the entire time I've been on TFP.
     
    Plan9, Nov 24, 2012
    #19
    • Like Like x 1
  20. greywolf

    greywolf Slightly Tilted

    There is a war on Christmas, and it's being fought and won by retailers. The longer they can promote/sustain "Christmas" as a commercial season, the better for them, and the less Christmas has any particular meaning at all. Banning religious symbols be damned... the retailers are systematically stripping the holiday of any religious content, and for the most part, people are accepting/encouraging that. The religious symbols of Christmas are quickly becoming generic seasonal trademarks, and little more to the general public. "Non-Christians" being upset about the religious aspect of Christmas in the US/Canada is becoming less and less relevant.
     
    greywolf, Nov 25, 2012
    #20
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