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Bill O'Rights · 12-13-2005, 06:43 AM

Quote:

THE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON - What's missing from the White House Christmas card? Christmas.This month, as in every December since he took office, President Bush sent out cards with a generic end-of-the-year message, wishing 1.4 million of his close friends and supporters a happy "holiday season."

Many people are thrilled to get a White House Christmas card, no matter what the greeting inside. But some conservative Christians are reacting as if Bush had stuck coal in their stockings.

Religious conservatives are miffed because they have been pressuring stores to advertise Christmas sales rather than "holiday specials" and urging schools to let students out for Christmas vacation rather than for "winter break." They celebrated when House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., insisted that the sparkling spectacle on the Capitol lawn should be called the Capitol Christmas tree, not a holiday spruce.

Then along comes a generic season's greeting from the White House, paid for by the Republican National Committee. The cover art is also secular, if not humanist: It shows the presidential pets - two dogs and a cat - frolicking on a snowy White House lawn.

"This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture," said William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Bush "claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one," said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com. "I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it."

Susan Whitson, Laura Bush's press secretary, defended the first family. "Certainly President and Mrs. Bush, because of their faith, celebrate Christmas," she said. "Their cards in recent years have included best wishes for a holiday season, rather than Christmas wishes, because they are sent to people of all faiths."

That is the same rationale offered by major retailers for generic holiday catalogs, and it is accepted by groups such as the National Council of Churches.

"I think it's more important to put Christ back into our war planning than into our Christmas cards," said the council's general secretary, the Rev. Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman.

But the White House's explanation does not satisfy groups that believe there is, in the words of the Heritage Foundation, a "war on Christmas" involving an "ever-stronger push toward a neutered holiday season so that non-Christians won't be even the slightest bit offended."

One of the generals on the pro-Christmas side is Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss.

"Sometimes it's hard to tell whether this is sinister - it's the purging of Christ from Christmas - or whether it's just political correctness run amok," he said. "I think in the case of the White House, it's just political correctness."

Wildmon does not give retailers the same benefit of the doubt. This year he has called for a consumer boycott of Target stores because the chain issued a holiday advertising circular that did not mention Christmas. Last year he aimed a similar boycott at Macy's Inc., which averted a repeat this December by proclaiming "Merry Christmas" in its advertising and in-store displays.

"It bothers me that the White House card leaves off any reference to Jesus, while we've got Ramadan celebrations in the White House," Wildmon said. "What's going on there?"

At the Catholic League, Donohue had just announced a boycott of the Lands' End catalog when he received his White House holiday card. True, he said, the Bushes included a verse from Psalm 28, but Psalms are in the Old Testament and do not mention Jesus' birth.

"They'd better address this, because they're no better than the retailers who have lost the will to say 'Merry Christmas,'" he said.

Donohue said that Wal-Mart, facing a threatened boycott, added a Christmas page to its Web site and fired a customer relations employee who wrote a letter linking Christmas to "Siberian shamanism." He was not mollified by a letter from Lands' End saying it "adopted the 'holiday' terminology as a way to comply with one of the basic freedoms granted to all Americans: freedom of religion."

What is so bad about saying "Happy Holidays"? I've used that phrase for years, and I'm certainly no soldier in the "War on Christmas". Let's face it, not everyone is Christian. And there are numerous holidays, celebrated by other religions, that coincide with this time of the year. Is it that big of a deal? I, for one, don't think so. But, I tend to not make such a big thing out of situations such as a simple "Happy Holidays". Are people really getting that thin skinned? Do some honestly feel that threatened by it, or are they just out for attention?