This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else - New York Times

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Sat, 03 Dec 2005 17:50:36 -0800

[Zepps_News] This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas,

or Else - New York Times

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/opinion/04sun3.html?hp

 

 

This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else

 

 

By ADAM COHEN

Published: December 4, 2005

 

Religious conservatives have a cause this holiday season: the

commercialization of Christmas. They're for it.

 

The American Family Association is leading a boycott of Target for not

using the words " Merry Christmas " in its advertising. (Target denies it

has an anti-Merry-Christmas policy.) The Catholic League boycotted

Wal-Mart in part over the way its Web site treated searches for

" Christmas. " Bill O'Reilly, the Fox anchor who last year started a

" Christmas Under Siege " campaign, has a chart on his Web site of stores

that use the phrase " Happy Holidays, " along with a poll that asks, " Will

you shop at stores that do not say 'Merry Christmas'? "

 

This campaign - which is being hyped on Fox and conservative talk radio

- is an odd one. Christmas remains ubiquitous, and with its celebrators

in control of the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and every

state supreme court and legislature, it hardly lacks for powerful

supporters. There is also something perverse, when Christians are being

jailed for discussing the Bible in Saudi Arabia and slaughtered in

Sudan, about spending so much energy on stores that sell " holiday trees. "

 

What is less obvious, though, is that Christmas's self-proclaimed

defenders are rewriting the holiday's history. They claim that the

" traditional " American Christmas is under attack by what John Gibson,

another Fox anchor, calls " professional atheists " and " Christian

haters. " But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going

back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is

not defending America's Christmas traditions, but creating a new version

of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

 

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out

of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source

of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from

Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first

Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building

projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681

Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas " by forbearing

of labor, feasting or in any other way " a crime.

 

The concern that Christmas distracted from religious piety continued

even after Puritanism waned. In 1827, an Episcopal bishop lamented that

the Devil had stolen Christmas " and converted it into a day of worldly

festivity, shooting and swearing. " Throughout the 1800's, many religious

leaders were still trying to hold the line. As late as 1855, New York

newspapers reported that Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist churches

were closed on Dec. 25 because " they do not accept the day as a Holy

One. " On the eve of the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in just 18

states.

 

Christmas gained popularity when it was transformed into a domestic

celebration, after the publication of Clement Clarke Moore's " Visit from

St. Nicholas " and Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly drawings, which created

the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. The new

emphasis lessened religious leaders' worries that the holiday would be

given over to drinking and swearing, but it introduced another concern:

commercialism. By the 1920's, the retail industry had adopted Christmas

as its own, sponsoring annual ceremonies to kick off the " Christmas

shopping season. "

 

Religious leaders objected strongly. The Christmas that emerged had an

inherent tension: merchants tried to make it about buying, while

clergymen tried to keep commerce out. A 1931 Times roundup of Christmas

sermons reported a common theme: " the suggestion that Christmas could

not survive if Christ were thrust into the background by materialism. " A

1953 Methodist sermon broadcast on NBC - typical of countless such

sermons - lamented that Christmas had become a " profit-seeking period. "

This ethic found popular _expression in " A Charlie Brown Christmas. " In

the 1965 TV special, Charlie Brown ignores Lucy's advice to " get the

biggest aluminum tree you can find " and her assertion that Christmas is

" a big commercial racket, " and finds a more spiritual way to observe the

day.

 

This year's Christmas " defenders " are not just tolerating

commercialization - they're insisting on it. They are also rewriting

Christmas history on another key point: non-Christians' objection to

having the holiday forced on them.

 

The campaign's leaders insist this is a new phenomenon - a " liberal

plot, " in Mr. Gibson's words. But as early as 1906, the Committee on

Elementary Schools in New York City urged that Christmas hymns be banned

from the classroom, after a boycott by more than 20,000 Jewish students.

In 1946, the Rabbinical Assembly of America declared that calling on

Jewish children to sing Christmas carols was " an infringement on their

rights as Americans. "

 

Other non-Christians have long expressed similar concerns. For decades,

companies have replaced " Christmas parties " with " holiday parties, "

schools have adopted " winter breaks " instead of " Christmas breaks, " and

TV stations and stores have used phrases like " Happy Holidays " and

" Season's Greetings " out of respect for the nation's religious diversity.

 

The Christmas that Mr. O'Reilly and his allies are promoting - one

closely aligned with retailers, with a smack-down attitude toward

nonobservers - fits with their campaign to make America more like a

theocracy, with Christian displays on public property and Christian

prayer in public schools.

 

It does not, however, appear to be catching on with the public. That may

be because most Americans do not recognize this commercialized,

mean-spirited Christmas as their own. Of course, it's not even clear the

campaign's leaders really believe in it. Just a few days ago, Fox News's

online store was promoting its " Holiday Collection " for shoppers. Among

the items offered to put under a " holiday tree " was " The O'Reilly Factor

Holiday Ornament. " After bloggers pointed this out, Fox changed the

" holidays " to " Christmases. "

 

 

 

--

" Intelligent Design " is just an effort by Republicans to pass

George W.'s resemblence to a chimpanzee as being nothing but coincidence

 

Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

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