One of my favorite winter season activities is tuning into the
always entertaining
”
War on Christmas
”
crusade. This fun-filled tradition started a few years ago when
Fox News pundits realized that terrorism, widespread unemployment
and the national debt just didn’t give Americans enough to worry
about.
One of my favorite winter season activities is tuning into the always entertaining “War on Christmas” crusade. This fun-filled tradition started a few years ago when Fox News pundits realized that terrorism, widespread unemployment and the national debt just didn’t give Americans enough to worry about. To honor the birth of the Prince of Peace, they came up with a news scenario that Christianity was under attack by people who use the more inclusive “Happy Holidays” instead of the religion-specific “Merry Christmas” as a form of seasonal greetings.
Fox News’ John Gibson began the campaign to save Christmas in 2005 when he published his book “The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.” Ever since the conspiracy came into the glare of the media’s spotlight, every December we’ve witnessed those conniving liberal Grinches cooking up even more sinister schemes in their plot to annihilate the sacred Christian holiday that brought us flying reindeer, dancing-singing snowmen and an obese old man who lives in the Arctic with toy-making elves.
This year’s biggest battle in the War on Christmas involved the Oklahoma city of Tulsa’s move to change the name of its annual “Christmas Parade of Lights” to the “Holiday Parade of Lights.” Fox News reporter Gretchen Carlson grilled the parade’s chairman Larry Fox on the name change and scolded him that Christmas would “suffer” because of his organization’s devilish decision to conspire with the liberals.
Carlson didn’t seem to mind the fact that this year’s parade had changed its sponsor from the American Electric Power-Public Service Company of Oklahoma to a popular Irish pub in downtown Tulsa called McNellie’s. The name change could have been worse. The beer-purveying underwriter could have demanded that the community celebration be called “The Holiday Parade of Bud Lights.”
Thank goodness Oklahoma’s Senator James Inhofe joined the fight against the nefarious scheming to undermine the Christian faith by the parade name-switching intrigue. Showing the same degree of courage he so often demonstrates on the Senate floor when calling global warming a “hoax,” Inhofe joined forces with the Acres of Love Alpaca Farm and refused to participate in the parade unless the word “Christmas” was reinserted. The name change, he asserted, was a “shameful attempt to take Christ, the true reason for our celebration, out of the parade’s title.” In a Fox News interview, the senator pondered: “Why do they always pick on the Christians?”
Why indeed do they always pick on the Christians, all God-fearing Americans must wonder? No doubt the nearly 230 million followers of Christ in the United States feel tragically persecuted by Tulsa’s parade name change. Boo on you, Larry Fox. Boo on you, sir, for ruining everyone’s Christmas by turning it into a “holiday.”
I’m truly grateful to the Sooner State’s senior senator for his brave stand to save Christmas. He helped us all to see how modern Christians now suffer the same level of persecution as the early Church martyrs that the ancient Romans threw to the Coliseum lions. Would it be impolite for me to question, however, Inhofe’s stand when going up against the persecution of other religious beliefs? We’ll overlook the fact he is a zealous promoter of the ethnic profiling of followers of Islam because, as he once put it, “all terrorists are Muslims or Middle Easterners.”
In dealing with the War on Christmas, we might all learn a holiday-time lesson from World War I, a real war that killed more than 8.5 million people. On Christmas Eve 1914, the fighting along the frontlines came to a stop for a brief, magical time. On that night, German, French and British soldiers laid down their arms and met as brothers in No Man’s Land to celebrate the Christmas season together. They sang carols, exchanged chocolate, wine and other goodies, played soccer matches and buried their dead. When the British commander heard about this spontaneous armistice, he ordered his troops to stop any further fraternization.
The World War I Christmas Truce was portrayed in the 2005 film “Joyeaux Noël.” The story expresses the true reason for the holiday season. Perhaps it proves the downfall of Christmas might not be imminent if we don’t happen to hear the “correct” seasonal greetings conveyed to us when we walk into a Wal-Mart or Macy’s.
Christmas marks a time to celebrate humanity and harmony. It’s a time to put our petty squabbles aside and gather together to commemorate a message of unconditional love – a message given to us all by a spiritual philosopher born 2,000 years ago. I have a hunch this Christmas season he’d like us all to call a cease-fire in the “war” over a holiday – a holy day – that celebrates the wisdom he shared with the world.
