Jonah Goldberg: The War on Christmas (excerpts)

[L]et me just say that I love Christmastime and I take no offense whatsoever when someone says to me, “Merry Christmas.” Indeed, I think it is written somewhere in the Talmud that if you make someone feel bad for sincerely wishing you a “Merry Christmas!” it means you’re a miserable, joyless ass (it sounds more high-minded in the original Hebrew). Of course, there’s a flip side to that. If you know someone is not Christian or hates Christmas for some reason, and you say “Merry Christmas” out of spite or vindictiveness, rather than with joy and good cheer, then you are the one putting the “ass” in Christmass. And that is part of the genius of the Left’s passive-aggressive war on Christmas. By forcing Christmas-lovers — Christian and non-Christian alike — to take time out of their day to marshal a metaphorically martial defense of Christmas, they further undermine the whole point of the holiday, and the Holy Day. Turning Christmas into a battleground in the culture war compounds the damage they’re already doing.

The war on Christmas can best be understood as the point at which several tectonic plates of the culture grind together. When they grind together really hard, we get earthquakes. The plates have been grinding together for generations, and they go by many names: secular humanism, nihilism, relativism, progressivism, Cthulhu, and others. The opposing forces have a lot of monikers as well: traditionalism, Christianity, conservatism, and, my favorite, the Good Guys. Christmas just happens to be one of the places where the Good Guys and Cthulhu fight on ground really favorable to the Good Guys. That’s because, properly speaking, Christmas should be about as controversial as puppies, kittens, motherhood, and Scotch: Just one of those things everyone agrees is a good thing. Indeed, that’s the underlying assumption among Christmas’s cable-show champions: Christmas used to be something that united us — but not anymore, thanks to the secular humanists, multiculturalists, and other killjoys. And that’s absolutely true. Christmas was uncontroversial for a while. Then it was controversial. Then it was uncontroversial. And so on. That’s because Christmas is in fact older than cable TV.

Thanks to Charles Dickens, Christmas became a time when parents thought about the Christmas they wished they had had when they were kids. And so they set out to deliver it to their own children. That’s one of the keys to Christmas’s enduring popularity. As Bill Murray says in Scrooged (you knew I’d come back to that), at Christmastime, however briefly, “We are the people we always hoped we would be.”

....take comfort in the knowledge that the Christmas haters are not merely losers, they are losing. Most Americans — who spend almost a trillion dollars a year at Christmastime by the way — understand those people are idiots. If anything, Christmas keeps winning in the war on Christmas because Christmas is so much Odin-damn fun! So enjoy the holiday on Dickensian grounds — faith, family, fun all mixed into one. Say “Merry Christmas” with joy in your heart and have a good time — if for no other reason than the fact that nothing pisses off the people who hate Christmas more than people actually enjoying Christmas. And by all means, let us redouble our efforts in our defensive war against relativism or the relentless erosion of our culture by political correctness. But there are other days of the year to have those arguments. The whole point of Christmas is not to have arguments. That’s what Thanksgiving dinner is for.

Cause stopping Immigration of Muslim terrorists is the worst thing ever and Un-American and Trump and his followers should be killed!

School Principal bans Santa, Thanksgiving and the Pledge of Allegiance  By Susan Edelman December 13, 2015 New York Post

Santa Claus is banned. The Pledge of Allegiance is no longer recited. “Harvest festival” has replaced Thanksgiving, and “winter celebrations” substitute for Christmas parties.

New principal Eujin Jaela Kim has given PS 169 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a politically correct scrub-down, to the dismay of teachers and parents.

“We definitely can’t say Christmas, nothing with Christmas on it, nothing with Santa,” PTA president Mimi Ferrer said administrators told her. “No angels. We can’t even have a star because it can represent a religious system, like the Star of David.”

Kim, 33, did not return a call or e-mail seeking comment.

A memo last month from assistant principal Jose Chaparro suggested a “harvest festival instead of Thanksgiving or a winter celebration instead of a Christmas party.” He urged staff to “be sensitive of the diversity of our families. Not all children celebrate the same holidays.”

Ninety-five percent of the 1,600 kids at PS 169 are Asian or Hispanic.

Don't Cry Over Spilt Nog

This wretched holiday is soon ended...

Slate: "Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore"

"When I was a kid, I knew two different Santa Clauses. The first had a fat belly, rosy cheeks, a long white beard, and skin as pink as bubble gum. He was omnipresent, visiting my pre-school and the local mall, visible in all of my favorite Christmas specials."

Then there was the Santa in my family’s household, in the form of ornaments, cards, and holiday figurines. A near-carbon copy of the first one—big belly, rosy cheeks, long white beard: check, check, check. But his skin was as dark as mine.

Seeing two different Santas was bewildering. Eventually I asked my father what Santa really looked like. Was he brown, like us? Or was he really a white guy?

My father replied that Santa was every color. Whatever house he visited, jolly old St. Nicholas magically turned into the likeness of the family that lived there.

In hindsight, I see this explanation as the great Hollywood spec script it really is. (Just picture the past-their-prime actors who could share the role. Robert De Niro! Eddie Murphy! Jackie Chan! I smell a camp classic.) But at the time, I didn’t buy it. I remember feeling slightly ashamed that our black Santa wasn’t the “real thing.” Because when you’re a kid and you’re inundated with the imagery of a pale seasonal visitor—and you notice that even some black families decorate their houses with white Santas—you’re likely to accept the consensus view, despite your parents’ noble intentions.

Two decades later, America is less and less white, but a melanin-deficient Santa remains the default in commercials, mall casting calls, and movies. Isn’t it time that our image of Santa better serve all the children he delights each Christmas?

 By Aisha Harris for Salon