The Extremely Profitable “War on Christmas”

[ck4829]

In its constant search for any phony non-issue that it can cite as evidence that Christians in this country are under attack, last year the Right fabricated the idea that there was some sort of “War on Christmas" that was supposedly tied to some "liberal plot" that was behind everything from efforts to legalize gay marriage to opposition to Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Having exploited the issue for all it was worth last year, the Right began ramping up this year's efforts back in August and looks to be planning on riding the issue straight through until the end of the year.

While the Right claims that they are merely seeking to thwart an “accelerating effort by secularists in America to annihilate expressions of Christmas and Christianity,” its effort to generate a controversy where none exists has been a rousing success – in more ways than one:

The Mississippi-based American Family Association says it has sold more than 500,000 buttons and 125,000 bumper stickers bearing the slogan "Merry Christmas: It's Worth Saying."

AFA raised the flag in the "Christmas wars" in August by criticizing "holiday" catalogues. Benefiting from the early start, the association sold more than 500,000 buttons and 100,000 magnets encouraging supporters to "be an unspoken witness for Christ's birthday." The "Merry CHRISTmas" magnets were available for a $3 suggested donation; the buttons were $7 for a pack of 10. Bulk rates also were offered.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal aid group that boasts a network of some 900 lawyers standing ready to "defend Christmas," says it has moved about 20,000 "Christmas packs." The packs, available for a suggested $29 donation, include a three-page legal memo and two lapel pins.

Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based Christian legal group, has shipped 20,000 "Christmas packs" this year, said spokesman Greg Scott. The value of the "goods and services" included is $4, receipts show. The rest of the money goes into ADF's general fund, Scott said. A majority of the packs were sold for less than the suggested $29 donation, he added, though he declined to provide details.

And Liberty Counsel, a conservative law firm affiliated with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, says it has sold 12,500 legal memos on celebrating Christmas and 8,000 of its own buttons and bumper stickers.

Orders are also brisk for Liberty Counsel's Help Save Christmas Action Pack, said Staver, the group's president. The $25 pack includes "The Memo that Saved Christmas," which offers legal advice on celebrating the holiday at work and in public schools, along with buttons and bumper stickers.

Basic math says the Liberty Counsel has pulled in an estimated $300,000+, the Alliance Defense Fund an estimated $500,000+, and the American Family Association an estimated $600,000+ from selling their “War on Christmas” wares.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/2006/12/the_extremely_p.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. It's all about the money, honey

and some say that's the reason for the season anyway. My family never had an overly commercialized Christmas, and I've never gotten into the buying frenzy that so many get into this time of year. It is important to note that Japan has celebrated "Christmas" since the US occupation after WWII-not as a religious holiday, but a commercial one.

[Ian_rd]

21. It is indeed all about the money

James Dobson and Pat Robertson aren't rich because they're good, pious Christians. They're rich because they're savvy business men. They make products and sell them. While some sell cogs and widgets, they sell fear. And they're raking it in!

[Mikey929]

2. Red Meat

It's red meat for the R-wing lapdogs who need to find something to feel persecuted about. As if someone who drives an SUV and lives in a gated community can be persecuted. Such crap. When I drive down my street, I still see a ton of lights, trees, Santas, etc. Doesn't seem like Christmas is going anywhere in my neighborhood.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

3. I live in Bible thumping, Bush voting country & have NEVER heard anyone mention this.

Most people I know watch Fox News all the time too. I've never heard about the "war on Xmas" except on Fox, O'Reilly etc.

[Sherman A1]

4. Thanks!

I just forwarded it to a couple of folks who seem to never miss an opportunity to send me the ususal rounds of "inspirational" emails including the "It's a CHRISTMAS tree" and other such nonsense.....Most helpful!!!

[Just-plain-Kathy]

5. I always thought...

...the “War on Christmas” was a political tool used by Neo-conservative news outlets like FOX.

It’s used to divide us as a nation. It uses the fact that most Americans celebrate Christmas. This fictitious “War” was made-up in order to get people mad. It brainwashes people into feeling it’s their God given right to say “Merry Christmas”, and anyone who uses the inclusive fraise "Happy Holiday", is on the wrong side of any issue.

[Captain Hilts]

6. For the first time, my neighborhood does not have a Christmas tree.

We have white, twirling, white horns instead. It looks like Star Trek topiary.

So, no Christmas tree here. First time in the nine years this shopping area has existed.

[lapfog_1]

7. Screw the two year old phony "War on Christmas"...

What about the 1,785 year old war on Saturnalia and/or Yule by the Christians! They stole the holiday and turned it into a holy day for their lord and savior, and then perverted it with crass commercialism.

[Bill McBlueState]

22. at this time of year,

We should remember Saturn, the true reason for the season.

It rises around 9 this month.

[pagandem4justice]

27. Hey, Saturnalia was a modernization, too, in its time

The Romanization of older, rural festivals in the ancient Mediterranean, such as rural Dionysia in Greece .

Down with those copy-catting fundies! :rofl:

[NewJeffCT]

8. Didn't conservative Christian originate "Happy Holidays" back in the day?

I cannot find a link for this, but I could swear I read it before:

But, back in the 1940s or 50s, conservative Christian leaders supposedly decried the fact that Christmas - a holy day that was supposed to be celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ - had become so commercialized in the modern post WW 2 era, that they came up with the idea of saying "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" in order to dis-associate Christmas from such rampant consumerism. If one said "Happy Holidays" they could then associate the shopping with other holidays that took place at that time of year - Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, etc. - and not just that most holy of days.

[mwb970]

9. They're never satisfied! /nt

[ClassWarrior]

18. Look at "A Charlie Brown Christmas"...

...(which I just did last night). In it, Charlie Brown decries the over-commercialization of the holidays, and Linus recites the Book of Matthew to explain "the true meaning of Christmas."

So now because some RW radio blowhards want to stir up a controversy, we're supposed to throw the Baby Jesus to the profit predators again? I don't think so.

NGU.

[tanyev]

10. Moneychangers.

IIRC, Jesus didn't think very highly of them, either.

[TlalocW]

11. I say we all start saying

Feliz Navidad. That way we're both doing and not doing what Bill O'Reilly wants, and maybe he'll explode.

TlalocW

[bumblebee1]

26. Here's a couple more

Buon Natale
Joyeux Noel
Kala Khristooyena (sp)

That's Merry Christmas in Italian, French and Greek. That should both satisfy O'Really and John Gibson. It should also p*ss them off in no uncertain terms.

[BOSSHOG]

12. Hey lets get the dumbasses to buy buttons and magnets

Lets make sure the next generation of "christian" dumbasses are trained to give us more money. Yeah, that's the ticket. And to think there is not one shred of evidence of a war on christmas just like there's not one shred of WMD in Iraq. Damn us "conservatives" sure do know how to manipulate the ignorant huh?

[Canuckistanian]

13. Off to the Greatest Page you go

$600k for "War on Christmas" gear? I want some of that action.

Are there franchises?

[GreenZoneLT]

14. Wankers. They're turning "Merry Christmas" into a political statement.

They do have a (small) point, that weaselly retailers are misusing language for fear of losing a nickel in sales.

"Happy Holidays" is great; it implies Christmas, New Years, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, the Solstice, Mithra's birthday, the Pastafarian Pirate Feast, etc. "Season's Greetings" -- swell. But doing what a LOT of retailers have begun doing, referring to "holiday trees" and "holiday ornaments," and avoiding the word Christmas altogether in their advertising, is an offense to the English language more than it is to Christianity.

It's a freakin' Christmas tree, you dorks. Those aren't "holiday" menorahs. Nobody puts up Kwanzaa lights or Hanukkah wreaths, or lies awake waiting for Santa on Holiday Eve. You can call it holiday shopping, but why? None of the other holidays involve such massive gift-giving, if any at all, and probably 99 percent of what's being bought is going to Christmas presents.

Another modicum of blame goes to brain-dead school administrators who think that allowing kids to decorate Christmas stockings for art class is somehow a state endorsement of religion.

I guess it's because political Christians are so obnoxious that some people have become embarrassed to embrace Christmas (which is only nominally a Christian holiday). It's a federal holiday of more cultural than religious significance. So Merry Goddam Christmas, everybody (or as an Arab friend whose spelling is a bit iffy recently wrote, Merry Charisma).

Well, that's my rant. I'll be back in April or whenever Easter is to bitch about "spring baskets."

[jazzjunkysue]

31. Xtians think everything is politics. To them, it is.

But I don't like seeing overtly christian rituals at school because it makes the jewish/athiest kids feel second class. School should never do that. Ever.

[drm604]

15. This nonsense really bugs me.

Nobody is stopping them from saying "Merry Christmas"! They're not being attacked.

What they want is to control others and make them say "Merry Christmas". If there's a war, they are starting it and they are the attackers. It's a war against being civil towards other people. It's a war on non-Christians.

[IndyOp]

20. But the promulgators of the "War on Christmas" WANT them to feel attacked...

Raise the terrorist warning to orange.

Arrest members of a terrorist cell in Florida = kids who can't afford belts to keep their pants up.

Bacteria in the food.

Shampoo that can be used to make bombs on a plane.

Anthrax.

...a War on Christmas!

Fear IS their product.

:(

[Donnachaidh]

16. you know, the numbers they quote on their *successful* legal memos etc.

DOESN'T add up to a huge success. In fact, in terms of numbers sold - it's pretty paltry. Just where do they get off saying it's a success?

[Bridget Burke]

17. Well, the war has been going on for a long time.

This Wiki article starts back when the Puritans had their own, very real, War on Christmas, that Popish & Pagan holiday. (They lost.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_controversies

But this is one of the earliest "modern" instances:

The December 1957 News and Views published by the Church League of America, an organization co-founded in 1937 by George Washington Robnett attacked the use of Xmas in an article titled "X=The Unknown Quantity." The claims were picked up later by Gerald L.K. Smith who in December 1966 claimed that Xmas was a "blasphemous omission of the name of Christ" and that "'X' is referred to as being symbolical of the unknown quantity." Smith further argued that Jews introduced Santa Claus to suppress the New Testament accounts of Jesus, and that the United Nations at the behest of "world Jewry" had "outlawed the name of Christ." Such claims are made in the face of documented centuries-long history of use of Χ (actually a chi) as an abbreviation for "Christ" (Χριστός).

(Santa? Jewish? Who knew?)

Hey, here's a familiar name!

In 1999, VDARE.com founder & editor Peter Brimelow is credited for first coining the term "War on Christmas", or "War Against Christmas", and the analysis of this issue became a prominent piece of conservative cultural criticism in the United States.Brimelow himself has written that he got National Review editor John O'Sullivan to begin a War Against Christmas competition when they both involved with magazine in the mid-1990s; after O'Sullivan was removed as editor, effective January 1998, the competition was dropped VDARE.com hosts an annual "War Against Christmas Competition" which has an extensive compendium of alleged "anti-Christmas" incidents.

Brimelow's VDARE is famous for opposing immigration. Legal immigration, too--especially of the non-white variety. They are one of the more polite hate groups.

O'Reilly is late to the party.

[procopia]

19. The in-your-face "Merry CHRISTmas" greeting

is using the lord's name in vain, IMHO.

[kiki]

23. "There's a sucker born every minute..."

"...and nine out of ten of them vote Republican."

[Forrest Greene]

24. I Don't Like Jesus

He's mean & stupid & he scares me.

[pdrichards114]

25. This won't be popular.

But why aren't we jumping on this money bandwagon. Let's fully endorse this war on Christmas and sell buttons, and shirts, and all that cheap plastic crap. Take the money and use it to further our liberal-godless-agenda. BWAHAHAHAHA!

[rasputin1952]

28. Ah...the old "War on Christmas" saw....

What I find odd about the whole "WOC" stuff is that it just another fear mongering tactic of the RW. There must "always be an enemy"; a Commie behind every tree, a Union Organizer behind every bush, a "terrorist" in every car just waiting for an opportunity to blow him/herself up in the name of some religious edict.

Fear...the only thing the RW ever gets right. A constant barrage of fear based simplicities that do nothing but set the stage for the next wave of fear mongering.

People of all religions, non-religions, points of view and other aspects of humanity should see this, and other occasions as times of hope and gentility. There is nothing wrong with people hoping for Peace on Earth or Goodwill toward their fellow man; these are things that should be year-round goals. But leave it to the Mighty Grinches of the RW to find a niche where they can instill more fear of something that is essentially a non-issue.

I am in Nebraska, and the small town of Petersburg that I went through today had a Nativity in the Town Square, in fact, I counted 11 Nativities today from the Town Square to windows in private homes. No one wanted them torn down, no one even cast a second glance. If anyone did want them taken down, they didn't say so openly, they tolerated them just as much as others tolerate Menorahs or a Star and Crescent, or anything else for that matter.

I doubt the people of Petersburg cared either way, just as the vast majority of Americans can not be bothered by this annual intrusion of O'Reilly and friends. Americans are a tolerant lot, and only those with access to radio or TV screech about the "denigration" of Christmas or any other holiday; they fail to see that days or "seasons" like this are a sign of hope.

I wonder if these same simplistic morans feel there is a "War on the 4th of July", after all, many so called "patriots" sit on chairs designed out of flags, eat off paper plates that look like flags, (and them toss them into the street). There are people who dress up like flags draped monstrosities, breaking wind and leaving urine stains on the flag...and this is not to mention the patriots that sit at a parade half sotted on warm beer, (in flag motif chairs), and refuse to rise when the Colors pass. These are the same people that believe that a "war on Christmas" is an ever present danger, but the "War on the 4th of July" doesn't seem to get them to notice just how foolish they really are.

So....for all who celebrate this as the remembrance of the birth of Jesus, enjoy the season. For all who this season as a message of hope, enjoy the season. For those who find this just another day, enjoy the day. Let us all see if we can just find the good things in people that are all around us...it is not the season or the day, it is what we all hold in our hearts as something that we should emulate everyday...the hope that equality and justice will be a part of human existence. No god, gods or anything else but humanity itself can bestow that upon itself.

The hell w/O'Reilly, shut him off, ignore him; or if that is not to your liking, laugh at him....laugh long and hard, for the one thing that people like BillO can't stand, is that they are not being taken seriously. He will implode, and that will be worth tuning in for....:)

[Jeffersons Ghost]

29. K&R oh, how high they sit on a morality steed when they ride toward big profits!

[NoSheep]

30. Extremely Profitable War against the perceived War on Christmas