White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

Christmas Is Winning the ‘War’

December 21, 2013 by White House Chronicle Leave a Comment

The sinister forces that are supposed to be vanquishing Christmas, in what is called the “War on Christmas,” are in retreat. In fact, they are celebrating it.

Across secular Europe the creches are on display and decorations adorn street lamps. In most towns and villages, the central square is transformed into a Christmas market with a skating rink and stalls selling good things to eat and, even better, to drink. A million amplifiers blast carols in many languages. More traditional carolers go door to door.

Across the United States Christmas fever has been building, like the strains of Maurice Ravel's “Bolero,” since Thanksgiving. It is humanity's greatest festival; a wonderful collective indulgence, a surrender simultaneously to our profound and trivial selves.

The “War on Christmas” is an argument advanced by commentators on Fox Cable News that centers on skirmishes over the First Amendment. Fox actually publishes on the Internet a map of sites where it believes the forces opposed to Christmas are in hand-to-hand combat with the defenders of the Baby Jesus. Really!

The crux of the argument from the “war” people is that Christmas is a religious celebration that has been taken over by the ungodly. In fact, historically, it is an ungodly festival that was taken over by Christianity. It was a pagan festival that became a Christian festival and adjusted to the lands where it spread—and to the religious intensity of the time.

There is no mention of snow in the Bible; but thanks to Northern and Eastern Europeans, snow is part of Christmas. In hot Africa and India, shop windows are decorated with cotton wool and children sing “Good King Wenceslas” with the acceptance that snow is part of their Christmas, too. Yes, people who have never seen snow can dream of a white Christmas. That is just part of the great cultural snowball that is Christmas.

There is a silliness attending those who persist in believing that forces of atheism, secularism, and all the other religions, especially Islam, are out to rip the religious soul out of Christmas. Not quite. In Islam, Jesus is a prophet and a messiah and to be a believer, you must accept him. Others love the story of the nativity without accepting it as a threat to their beliefs.

One of the joys of Christmas is that it is such a wondrous bundle of beliefs, cultural agglomerations and ethnic inclusions that to strip out any of them is to do violence to the best time of year all over the world. Charles Dickens' masterpiece “A Christmas Carol” may embody the Christian spirit, but it features ghosts; Father Christmas comes from a union of German and Nordic mythology with the first Christian saint, Nicholas, who was known for his gifts to the poor. The old man who lives at the North Pole is now a global figure – incidentally, Megan Kelly — of many ethnicities. There is an Indian version, a Turkish version and a Brazilian version of him. I doubt any of these three is thought of as Caucasian.

Christmas is a festival of many splendors: decorations, from Russian icons to tinsel made in China; flora, from fir trees and mistletoe to ferns, in tropical climes; food, from German stollen to Mexican bacalao; music, from Bach to Broadway.

Much of the argument nowadays is about Christmas greetings, “Merry Christmas” versus “Happy Holidays.” My father, who read the King James Bible every day, had never read the U.S. Constitution, never heard of the separation of church and state, and who lived all his life in British Africa, used to say, “Season's Greetings” or “Compliments of the Season.” His argument was that “not everyone is a Christian, but everyone has Christmas." Quite so. Merry Christmas. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: Christmas, Fox Cable News, Megan Kelly

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
IRENA Panel Urges Youth To Move from Anger to Action on Energy Transition

IRENA Panel Urges Youth To Move from Anger to Action on Energy Transition

Linda Gasparello

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate change canary, didn’t participate in the 13th assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), held in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 14 to 15. Perhaps it was because she was otherwise engaged in protesting against the razing of the German village of Lützerath for […]

Big Tech First Cornered the Ad Market, Now Practices Censorship

Big Tech First Cornered the Ad Market, Now Practices Censorship

Llewellyn King

Big tech has siphoned off advertising and wants to be a global censor.  The Department of Justice has filed suit against Google for its predatory advertising practices. Bully! Not that I think Google is inherently evil, venal or greedier than any other corporation. Indeed, it is a source of much good through its awesome search […]

Going Green Is a Palpable Need but a Tough Transition

Going Green Is a Palpable Need but a Tough Transition

Llewellyn King

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — I first heard about global warming being attributable to human activity about 50 years ago. Back then, it was just a curiosity, a matter of academic discussion. It didn’t engage the environmental movement, which marshaled opposition to nuclear and firmly advocated coal as an alternative. Twenty years on, there […]

My Adventures With Classified Documents

My Adventures With Classified Documents

Llewellyn King

It is easy to start hyperventilating over classified documents. It isn’t the classification but what is in the documents that counts. Much marked classified is rubbish. I have been around the classification follies for years. In 1970, I did what might be called a study, but it was just a freelance article on hovercraft use […]

Copyright © 2023 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in