"Merry Christmas": A Racist Term?

Might not seem obvious, but the mere use of "Merry Christmas" could be a racist, or a bigoted statement. Don't follow? Walk through a mall, a crowded park or down a busy city street. How many are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddists, Native American, or any one of a number of smaller religions. Who prefers Hannukah, Kwanza, or nothing at all. To assume that all of those folks celebrate or recognize Christmas as "their" holiday is a bit obnoxious and at the very least bigoted.

How many folks do you meet any given day that you can be certain are Christians who recognize Christmas on December 25th? Orthodox Christians celebrate the holiday in January. Even if the only folks you meet are White(you should get out more)there is no guarantee they are the "right" sort of white Christians. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, for example, are as white as the driven snow. I know a fair number of them and they love the "Holidays" without prostrating themselves on the Christmas alter.

Does that make Bill O'Reilly and others racists and bigots? I have my own views on the topic. As a white guy I've watched racism evolve from the overt hatred of the 60's.Righties back then also called ML King Jr. and "uppity" blacks fighting for Civil Rights part of a communist/bolshevik conspiracy. That refrain sound familiar? These days it is slick and carefully polished. It doesn't use the "N" word to degrade blacks, it discusses in couched and measured terms racial and social issues intended to show blacks in a bad or degraded light.

So is "Merry Christmas" a racist term? depends. How's that for an answer? Depends on how and who you use the term to. If it is for the guy from your church, probably not. If you're shoving it down someone's throat as part of the so-called "war on Christmas" you might be a a racist.

Black Friday-Thanks Pigrims for this Blessing!

Apparently the Republicrooks have expanded their war of conquest-the one in which they play the victim-to Thanksgiving. Yet another solemn, family day has been politicized for them. Yet another holiday has been perverted and abused for their winner-take-all propaganda campaign of hate, non-inclusiveness and self-serving ideology. This from the family values folks, the millionaires who "speak" for the common man, the party of God. Thing is, with any war, a surge creates pockets that expose your weaknesses, and that is just what they have done with this new front in the Holiday Wars (My term).

Michelle Malkin has bravely gone on the attack against the sensitivities of Native Americans. How dare they have an opinion about the country they once had. After all, through diseases, genocide, stereotyping and a laundary list of other grievances and abuses, Indians should be thankful come Thursday that they have been "awarded" reservation islands in a land originally theirs.

European folks have done such a great job with the land. But to be fair, at least Thanksgiving, with respectful reverence to Native American suffering and sacrifice, at least attained the stature of a family holiday. Did it always live up to that standard? Nothing people create ever completely measures up to its ideal, but lots of folks made an effort.

Thanksgiving was the start of the holiday season, not the holiday wars. It was a prelude to a spiritual period of Peace and giving, not stark and crass commercialism and political rough-housing, by any party. It definitely was not overtly recognized as merely the kickoff to frantic consumerism.

Now, we begin hearing retail sales forecasts for Black Friday in August. August! and now Black friday has become the real holiday. People plan and prepare for it, the corporate news ticks off the minutes, and helps to build anticipation for all the dubious sales and "Must Have" toys for the season.

Funny, O'reilly, Malkin, Medved, Bennett, Hannity and Limbaugh are all silent on this. But they are revealved by their silence. And native Americans are an easy soft target for their ugliness and Anti-American diatribes. It is easy to kick American Indians though. Not sure alot of Lakota, Cherokee, Ojibwa or Navajos watch a great deal of FOX News, except to dream about the old days and that whole Custer thing.

This is all about the money for them. It is always about the money for them, while treating the rest of us like saps who fall easily for crap phrases like "Borders, Language, Culture," or "Conservatism," or "its all right to have sex with men in airport bathrooms but be against gay marriage if you are a Republican Senator because some democrat took a bribe."

Stay home on Friday. Go work in a soup kitchen, help the hungry, volunteer at a church, synagogue or mosque(notice the lack of caps). Walk in the woods with the kids, a partner or spouse. Read a book! But if you wind up trampled in line at Walmart over a $25 DVD player, in a slug fest over the latest Guitar Hero game at a Best Buy your last words should be...


...Thanks Pilgrims for this blessing.

WAR ON CHRISTMAS? YES! YES! GOD, YES!

A war on Christmas, you say? Sign me up, and do it fast. Dear God, I wish I had enlisted a week before Halloween, when stores were already putting up Christmas decorations! Are you kidding? It is an awful distraction when I'm trying to focus on my pagan holiday for the undead. Never mind that the spirit of giving on Halloween has a character above and beyond what Christmas has become in this great nation (The magic of being a supreme cynic is you never really know when I'm being sarcastic).

We need a war on Christmas just to keep it sane. We need to draw deep and definitive battle lines before the hyper-commerciality and an uber-pushy element within the Christian community overruns what sanity still exists in this country. Roll bndages, man the trenches and keep Christmas where it needs to be.

No one is seriously calling for the eradication of the holiday. That's a made up antagonism by manipulative Republicrooks. Their blathering about greeting folks with "Happy Holidays" rather than some Nazi-esque commandment to retort a dutiful "Merry Christmas," is a cannard. That's right, I said cannard, and I am not even 50! But seriously, October for Christmas stuff? We start getting forecasts for Christmas retail sales in freakin' August! August!

I have Jewish friends who find Christmas a secondary holiday to Hannukah, and Muslim and non-Christian immigrant friends who dig the festive, family nature of the holidays, beginning at Thanksgiving and ending on New Years, when all normal people are by then exhausted, depressed, broke and fat! So it is "Happy Holidays," Christmas being just one among them.

People, I am seeing Christmas decorations in houses already, and now, with all of these shopping holidays, like Black Friday and the Christmas gift return period(A whole other set of hypocrisies) Christmas is like a fungus or the Blob-the good one with Steve Mcqueen; it just keep growing and growing and...

Each year we, as a nation, are whipped into more and more of a fervor to spend and spend and spend. It isn't about family and giving anymore, it has become a matter of national economic survival. Frenzied crowds assault, trample and even kill one another over marketed campaigns for the latest "must-have" toy.

Enough already! Sigh me up and ship me to the front. Christmas doesn't have to go, but it has certainly proved enough of a nuasance that it must be faced and battled back to what it is supposed to be. Not sure any more what that is? Might I suggest A Christmas Carol, the original classic from 1938, with Reginald Owen. Better yet, gather the family and read the book together(A guy nmed Dickens wrote it).

Death panels for Christmas, Santa

Dear Santa,

I've been a good liberal this year. I was kind to a Homo, recycled, cared about the environment, visited Europe a couple times(for my marching orders), conversed socially with Muslims, prayed for world peace and believed a black guy could actually do an okay job as President in pretty tough times. I wanted to have a couple of abortions, but just couldn't manage with my schedule.

But Santa, have you seen the malls lately? We all know they are the true bastions of the Christmas spirit. FOX and the Right spends all their time concerned with what sort of greeting this clerk or that stockboy uses. You know, the ones making barely a living wage, fearing some health crisis will overwhelm their families who are either uninsured or under-insured. The ones who are overworked jut to make ends meet. The ones Sean hannity, Michael Medved and the rest tell us pay no taxes. They are not delivering the proper and apparently official holiday response. But they aren't the problem so much as all those miserable looking folks tromping mechanically to purchase obligatory "gifts" for people thay normally wouldn't cross the road to spit on if their hair was on fire.

I don't want much for Christmas. If you could see your way clear to thin the herd a bit. Been hearing about these Death Panels in the new Obama health plan. I have scoured the bill and I'll be darned if I can find it anywhere. Would come in handy, just to free up a couple parking spaces. Any chance? Huh?

Michael Savage and Glen Beck talk about concetration camps for Right-wingers. Obviously they see something the rest of us don't. I mean, everything Obama has done since last January leads to that undeniable conclusion. After all, this Administration is hardly as transparent and open as the previous one. When Bush proclaimed he was the "decider," or that after a narrower election than Obama won by he had "political capital, and I intend to spend it," Bush was a hero. The Right cheered and laughed when Bush was obstinate with the "Leftist" media, or when he and Cheney refused to answer questions under oath about the deadliest terror attack on US soil. And remember hen he snubbed that annoying helen Thomas...liberal b%#@h! God, that was good theater!

So, what I'm saying is this, if the Right says Obama is this tyrranical facist out to kill old folks and Righties, could you hurry that up. Don't feel like elbowing my way through the mall. That's it. That's all I want this Christmas. Oh, and maybe a lump pf coal in Bill O'Reilly's stocking!

The First Shot

The no-man's land between the opposing trenches is littered with the debris of brutal skirmishes in this continuing war on Christmas. Bits of silver garland are strewn among the craters and fetid pools. Everywhere are broken candy canes and eviscerated sugar plums. A radio flyer is overturned. Its single wheel turns eerily in the still air before Thanksgiving, eeck, eeck, eeck, eeck. Silhouetted against the morning sky a salvation army collection plate rusts among coils of razor wire, decorated with tiny little Walmart Christmas lights made in China. The vacant eyes of a faded plastic Santa are fixed upon gathering storm clouds.

It is quiet now, after a brief fusillade of poorly aimed shots from FOX News and Bill O'Reilly last week.

"Public displays of the federal holiday," O'Reilly said on his 9NOV show, "are under attack by the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], and some department stores even tell employees to avoid saying "Merry Christmas." So we decided to look at some retail policies this year, and here's what we found out: Sears/Kmart would not answer our questions. Spokesman Chris Braithwaite simply ducked the issue. Their website banners: "Wish Book Holiday 2005." They were the worst we had to deal with. OK? Sears-Kmart. JCPenney says its catalog is always called 'Christmas catalog.' Federated Department Stores, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Burdines, says the words "Merry Christmas" will be used in most advertising. Same thing at May, Filene's, Lord & Taylor, and Marshall Field's. But Kohl's refused to define how the company will deal with Christmas. Dillard's, however, will use the slogan; 'Discover Christmas, Discover Dillard's.' So there you go. Shop where you like the atmosphere. Just remember, Kohl's and Sears-Kmart, basically, not all right."

So let me get this straight, Bill O'Reilly is part of the FOX cabal that is aghast when the Obama Administration interferes with big business. They call that Socialist and Communist,but he has no issue with Christmas being designated as a FEDERAL HOLIDAY, and that businesses must adhere to a prescribed terminology in promoting a religious event or face the wrath of a manufactured backlash. Indeed, the passion of their outrage would lead one to conclude that a Constitutional Convention or perhaps a law to mandate the use of "Merry Christmas" over "Happy Holidays" is desirable, and even acheivable. Sound socialist? After all, Christmas is hardly intended to be a commercial event.

It isn't even about the gifts. Recalling the Bible story and baby Jesus-not really a consideration for O'Reilly and the other Republicrooks masquerading as Christians-the gifts were FOR Jesus. I know that sounds funny coming from an avowed socialist(Hey, so was that Christ guy!) It is about the money for them. It is always about the money for them, which is precisely why they use Christianity and gullible viewers as a bludgeon against Business that dare defy their political ideology.

Looking out across the battlefield, soon to be littered with the trash spewed from the Republicrook trenches, I am reminded of someone else who used Christianity as a vehicle for his own agenda. Since they love to throw around terms like Socialist and Communist, a guy with a little mustache a few decades back rose to power on manipulated populism and incitement masked with fear, nationalism, bigotry and religion.

The essence of Christianity is for inclusion and forgiveness, not meanness, exclusion and spite. Much like the Constitution. Puts FOX and FRIENDS in a very special catgory...but therein lies the cornerstone of this column, and that is for all of us-Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Aithiests, Agnostics, bearded women, Pagans-to enjoy a freakin'
JERKLESS CHRISTMAS 2009!