The (Christmas) war fraud

It's become an annual holiday ritual for the OxyContin crowd to wring their hands over the alleged "war on Christmas" that no one but them seems to be able to detect. Last year, post-Yuletide, I posted about Whining by the "defenders" of Christmas.

But, being an annual event, this fringy meme from the wingnut right keeps popping up like the elephant gift that gets passed around from year to year. Michelle Goldberg gives us a good analysis of the phenomenon, a good example of analyzing a piece of rightwing crackpottery without giving it more dignity than it deserves: How the secular humanist grinch didn't steal Christmas: The right-wing crusade against the liberal "war on Christmas" is great for rallying the troops. Too bad the war doesn't exist Salon 11/21/05.

She sensibly points out its roots in Old Right anti-Semitic drivel:

In 1959, the recently formed John Birch Society issued an urgent alert: Christmas was under attack. In a JBS pamphlet titled "There Goes Christmas?!" a writer named Hubert Kregeloh warned, "One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas - to denude the event of its religious meaning." The central front in this perfidious assault was American department stores, where the "Godless UN" was scheming to replace religious decorations with internationalist celebrations of universal brotherhood.

"The UN fanatics launched their assault on Christmas in 1958, but too late to get very far before the holy day was at hand," the pamphlet explained. "They are already busy, however, at this very moment, on efforts to poison the 1959 Christmas season with their high-pressure propaganda. What they now want to put over on the American people is simply this: Department stores throughout the country are to utilize UN symbols and emblems as Christmas decorations."

According to the JBS, this assault on yuletide iconography was "part of a much broader plan, not only to promote the UN, but to destroy all religious beliefs and customs." The pamphlet called on all Americans to fight back by informing department stores that those with improper ornamentation wouldn't be getting their business.

She gives a good survey of this year's manifestations that are already appearing. No doubt the good Christians at FOX News will be trotting this out again this year.

She writes:

The myth of the war on Christmas has two parts. The first, echoing the John Birch Society, charges that department stores are trying to replace the celebration of Jesus' birthday with some secularized, universal winter holiday season, a switch encompassed by the godless greeting "Happy Holidays." The second asserts that the ACLU and other groups like the Anti-Defamation League and People for the American Way are trying to ban public Christmas displays. Like all conspiracy theories, there are a few grains of truth at the center of it - some schools, in an overzealous attempt to promote inclusiveness, have taken silly steps like renaming their Christmas trees "friendship trees." Some have indeed infringed on religious students' First Amendment rights. Weaving these stories together, the myth of the war on Christmas claims that the ACLU has forced Christmas into hiding, and that Christians must therefore battle to reclaim their rightful place in the culture.

But this rending of clothing over the so-called war on Christmas is even older than the John Birch Society:

As the Web site News Hounds pointed out last year, Henry Ford was sounding the alarm about the war on Christmas in his notorious 1921 tract "The International Jew." "The whole record of the Jewish opposition to Christmas, Easter and other Christian festivals, and their opposition to certain patriotic songs, shows the venom and directness of [their] attack," Ford wrote. He listed local outrages: "Christmas celebrations or carols in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Paul and New York met with strong Jewish opposition ... Local Council of Jewish Women of Baltimore petitions school board to prohibit Christmas exercises ... The Council of the University Settlement, at the request of the New York Kehillah [Jewish leadership], adopts this resolution: 'That in the holiday celebrations held annually by the Kindergarten Association at the University Settlement every feature of any sectarian character, including Christmas trees, Christmas programs and Christmas songs, shall be eliminated.'"

For those not familiar with the seamy political side of Henry Ford, he was a dedicated Jew-hater. He published the archetypal anti-Semitic tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in America. Adolf Hitler praised him by name in Mein Kampf, making him as I recall the only American to earn Hitler's praise in that notorious volume.

But then, in an unwarrented burst of generosity to the loonies, she writes:

To compare today's "war on Christmas" demagogues to Henry Ford is not to call them anti-Semites. Rather, they are purveyors of a conspiracy theory that repeatedly crops up in America. The malefactors change - Jews, the U.N., the ACLU - but the outlines stay the same. The scheme is always massive, reaching up to the highest levels of power.

Why she was hesitant to call this nonsense anti-Semitic, given the material she includes in her article, I'm not sure. She mentions a current book written by FOX News' John Gibson, The War on Christmas (2005). So I checked it out.

Here are a few key quotations. I'll give the quote, followed by the nudge-nudge wink-wink translation of what most of his readers will take from them. Then I'll mention an obvious way to look at it which is unlikely to occur to those fanatical enough to believe in the "war on Christmas" anyway - much less persuade them otherwise.

The war on Christmas is worse than I thought - and perhaps than you thought, because it's really a war on Christianity. In all the dramas described [in this book] that have played out over bans on the public celebration of Christmas, the plaintiff's reason is always that Christmas is Christian, and symbols of Christianity can't be permitted in public places.

In today's America, one is hard-pressed to find instances of Judaism suppressed in the schools, or in the workplace. Even in a post-9/11 world, Islam is treated so tenderly that the traditional Polish Catholic enclave of Hamtramck, Michigan, altered its noise ordinance to allow local mosquest to blast the Muslim call to prayer from loudspeakers.(my emphasis)

What the Freepers hear: Yeah, the liberals are against Christmas because it's Christian, you know, did you ever think about that? Who do you think is behind all of this? Because you don't hear of any Jews getting treated the way Christians are, now do you? [Nudge-nudge, wink-wink]

What a normal person might think: Maybe some people object to government-sponsored celebrations of religious holidays.And since Christmas is very much a religious holiday, maybe it's not the fact that it's specifically Christian that causes concern. No, Judaism isn't "suppressed", but neither is Christianity. In fact, if Jews were to apply the Christian Right standards, they would say the fact that public schools don't require religious celebration of Jewish holidays - or may not mention them at all - actually constitutes religious persecution. And presumably, the good folks of Hamtramck haven't simultaneously outlawed the ringing of Christian church bells when their noise ordinance accomodated Muslim calls to prayer.

Gibson quotes an Anne Cutting of Eugene, Oregon saying that she didn't really like a popular yard sign that said, "Easter - Jesus, He Is Risen". She said that it seemed a bit "confrontational" and "messianic" for her own taste.

Then he writes:

Ms. Cutting needs to be educated (to use the parlance of liberals) and taught that free speech also means the obligation of others, such as herself, to tolerate speech they do not like.

Freeper version: Yeah, those liberals, they claim to be tolerant but they want to prevent anyone who differs from them from even saying anything. (And you don't hear them doing that to Jews, now do you?)

Normal person version: Well, I didn't see a word in Cutting's statement about banning such yard signs. She just said she didn't like them and why. Also, it's news to me that "educated" is a word particularly associated with liberals. Is that considered a politically incorrect word among the FOXists? Or maybe I should ask, do they consider it "politically correct" and therefore bad? I get confused in OxyContinLand, where "correct" mean "incorrect" and such things.

These two quotes provide good examples of a practice often seen in far-right literature, of confounding two different meanings of a common word or phrase like "tolerant" or "public places". Gibson says the alleged enemies of Christmas think that "symbols of Christianity can't be permitted in public places". What civil libertarians are concerned about is the promotion of religion on public property and in government programs. In ordinary speech, a city street is a "public place". I've been around downtown San Francisco - not known as a hotbed of Christian Right zealotry - during every Christmas season for a number of years. On many streets, every store has come kind of Christmas display. If there are people who want to ban such displays from any "public place" I've never heard of them.

His use of "tolerance" about Anne Cutting is another example. Tolerance in the political-science sense means that you don't want a certain action or kind of speech prohibited; that you don't want people put in jail for it. "Tolerance" in daily speech means that one accepts something as permissable or acceptable. Someone can be personally intolerant of bigoted jokes or foul language (meaning you don't respond positively to them, or avoid people who use them, or tell them to shut the [Cheney] up) and still "tolerate" them in the sense of not putting them in jail or beating the beejesus out of them.

Gibson also plays with the notion that America is a "Christian country". Again, in political-theory terms that most people who make it through high-school civics can grasp, the fact that a country is "Christian" in the sense of Christianity being the dominant religion is something very different than the government of the country being a religious government. Turkey is a Muslim country with a secular government, as was Iraq until the current war. America is a Christian country with a secular government, although the latter is being increasingly challenged.

I don't like the term "Christian country" or the old Pat Robertson favorite "Christian nation" as applied to the US even as a description. But it should be easy for anyone to tell the difference between "Christian country" as a factual description and "Christian country" as the nature of the government.

Gibson rants on about Cutting for several paragraphs. He says that in her hometown of Eugene there is a popular bumpersticker reading, "So Many Christians, So Few Lions". And he concludes that "it's open season on the constitutional rights of Christians".

I don't know what things may be like in the decadent heathen town of Eugene. But I live a few miles from Berkeley, and I don't ever recall seeing that bumper sticker around there. "So Many Men, So Little Time", that one I've seen. "Peace is Patriotic", that one, too. And maybe I'm callous and cynical. But Eugene bumpersticker he cites strikes me as bad-taste humors for something I would choose to display on my car. Yet it hardly sounds to me like "open season on the constitutional rights of Christians". (Although with the recent report of Iraqi prisoners being threatened with lions from the Baghdad Zoo, maybe it sounds more current and literal than it might have a couple of years ago.)

Let's look at a final Gibson quote:

When Jews practice their religion in public, does an Anne Cutting complain? Do we see objections to the yarmulke as "confrontational" or messianic" because we see Jews wearing it in public?

No. The complaints about religion being practiced in pubic are almost exclusively about Christianity. Occasionally, a Jewish organization like the Anti-Defamation League will object to a Jewish religious practice that is carried on under public auspices, but in my opinion the objection is lodged only to maintain the rhetorical standing to object to Christian practices. Thus,the ADL opposed school holidays for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur a few years ago in a predominantly Jewish school district. (my emphasis)

Freeper version: See how sneaky those Jews are? They protest about Jewish religious practices being sponsored by the government. But when they complain about Jewish practices, they are really doing it to stamp out Christianity. Got that? Those Jews, you just can't trust them.

Normal-person version: What the [Cheney]?

Now, I would say the technical description for this kind of thing would be "anti-Semitic crap". If that sounds too clinical or highfalutin, we could just call it "Jew-hating bull****".

But I suppose if the Republicans and the Christian Right can have a shooting war in Iraq based on lies, exaggerations and forged documents, they can imagine up a "war on Christmas" or Christianity or whatever and pretend to defend the holy holiday against the Jews that they fantasize are attacking it.

Tags: anti-semitism, henry ford, john birch society, john gibson, michele goldberg, war on christmas