He sat in the bookstore, reading. His long hair, beard, lanky
frame, reflective demeanor, and upright posture suggested someone.
The title of the book he held was something about Jesus Christ. I
wanted to ask him if he was fact-checking.
He sat in the bookstore, reading. His long hair, beard, lanky frame, reflective demeanor, and upright posture suggested someone. The title of the book he held was something about Jesus Christ. I wanted to ask him if he was fact-checking.
I’m not a religious person, but lately I’ve been rooting for the Second Coming – and now would be as good a time as any. I understand that, according to zealots, I’m at risk for eternal damnation. It’s a risk worth running just to see what He would do if He walked in on the party right now.
Some Christians really need to get a grip.
We are having a repeat of last year’s phony “War on Christmas.” Jerry Falwell, Bill O’Reilly (that Christian who a year ago reportedly paid several million dollars to make a sex scandal go away), and an unheavenly host of others have declared war on “holiday” (as in “holiday tree”), proclaiming it to be some sort of ACLU plot to rob Christmas of its religious meaning.
Nonsense. Materialistic Americans of all beliefs accomplished that a long time ago.
Undeterred, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, has called for a boycott of Target stores because an advertising flyer omitted the word Christmas.
Mathew Staver of the Liberty Counsel is rattling legal sabers at governments entities that call it a “holiday” tree instead of a Christmas one. You know, like the tree that grew in the desert outside that stable – excuse me, manger – 2,000 years ago. Why should lefty lawyers get to file all the frivolous lawsuits?
Not even the White House is immune from the hysteria.
This year’s annual presidential holiday greeting card – mine must still be in the mail – wishes 1.4 million supporters a happy “Holiday
Season.” A spokesperson for Laura Bush offered the same explanation we all give for buying cards written in neutral language: “Because they are sent to people of all faiths.” Christmas and Hanukah (as well as Kwanzaa) fall only a day apart this year, and it’s the least we can do for our Jewish friends, who have to put up with all the hoopla.
But apparently even the First Lady has become a willing dupe of evil secularists.
William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, dismissed the White House explanation. “Ninety-six percent of Americans celebrate Christmas,” Donohue, for whom the Christmas spirit includes a boycott of the catalog company Land’s End, told the Washington Post. “Spare me the diversity lecture.”
Secular Americans, happily going about their obligatory buying duties, were taken by surprise by O’Reilly’s fatwa. Last year during his previous Christmas jihad, O’Reilly, reading from Donohue’s script, claimed that Christmas is celebrated in “more than 90 percent” of American homes. Since a City University of New York study revealed that the percentage of Americans that calls itself Christian is dropping, from 86 in 1990 to 77 in 2001, a lot of celebrants must be non-Christians.
If O’Reilly and his minions really want the holiday reserved for observant Christians, I suspect the National Retail Association might want to have a word with him first.
And therein lies the real purpose to all this hyperventilating. It’s Christmas. There’s money to be made.
O’Reilly’s colleague at Fox News, anchor John Gibson, just happens to have a book out called, yes, The War on Christmas. Despite O’Reilly’s best efforts, sales so far have been disappointing.
Staver is doing his pecuniary part, featuring his campaign at the top of the Liberty Counsel Web site: “Please make a tax-deductible contribution to promote our Christmas Campaign.” Note how you and I, as taxpayers, are helping to underwrite his paranoia.
Such crusades, concocted in the fevered imaginations on the radical right, may rally the faithful, but they turn off average Americans who don’t appreciate getting caught in the crossfire over a nonissue.
Of course, if a truly “traditional” Christmas is what you’re looking for, then ask the WWJD question. If that was Him I saw in the
bookstore, and the Second Coming is upon us, then what would He think about all this? Would He really – come on people, you know the answer – give a gosh darn about decorated trees?
He’d be too busy attending to the poor – and throwing money changers like Bill O’Reilly out of the churches.
John Yewell is a syndicated columnist living in Hollister. He can be reached at jy********@ma*.com.
