Banning Christmas - Ever Meet a Happy Atheist?

The Washington Dispatch ^ | 12/5/03 | Steve Yuhas

[narses]

From The Washington Dispatch

Opinion
Banning Christmas - Ever Meet a Happy Atheist?
Exclusive commentary by Steve Yuhas



Dec 5, 2003

The day after Thanksgiving ushers in the most joyous, and busiest, time of the year. The Christmas holiday season finds most Americans shopping for gifts for their loved ones (and a few for themselves) and making preparations for office parties, school plays and concerts. Small towns across the nation bring out carefully stored holiday decorations that date from World War II and leagues of volunteers and Boy Scouts carefully put them up to bring joy to the town and to the people who pass through. Cool weather blankets most of the country and even the most tepid of Christmas celebrator secretly yearns for at least a dusting of snow on Christmas Eve. Happiness seems to be everywhere and kindness is almost as easy to transfer as a late autumn cold.

Unless, that is, you belong to a band of anti-Christmas scrooges known as the ACLU or American United for the Separation of Church and State (“Americans United”).

For the last two decades these gangs of unhappy and unfulfilled Americans have gone town by town, school by school hoping to cleanse Christmas and every reference to the real reason we celebrate it from our public lexicon. Knowing that their mission to purge Christmas, God, Christ, and other religious symbols from the public square could not be accomplished through debate and discourse in a nation where some 94% of the people believe in God and the majority are Christian they turned to the all too willing courts to impose their atheist religion.

The ACLU and Americans United take to the airwaves in early November to let America know that they don’t have a personal stake in whether or not Christmas displays, carols, and cookies are put on in public schools or the public square, but their phones are ringing off the hook by people who are offended by such things. I’m Jewish and don’t celebrate Christmas, but have yet to be offended by a Christmas tree or Oh Come All Ye Faithful being played in city hall. Most of us know people who are not Christian – ask yourself how many of them have ever said they were offended by any of these things? The probable answer is none.

People have to ask how it is that so few people can effect change for so many? Ever notice that when it comes to banning Christmas and God from the public square that the news networks can only come up with a few people to support that position and put them on every channel. You’d think there would be people lining up to get on Fox News to debate the fact that they are offended by Christmas carols and nativity scenes, but it is just the same people saying the same things over and over and over again. It almost seems that there are four people who want Christmas banned and they are accomplishing it in the most amazing ways.

Many municipalities have outlawed the presence of a baby Jesus in a manger outside city hall. Christmas is a federal holiday and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in any government office outside of police and fire departments on duty that day, but if the birth of Jesus is so offensive why not just ban the holiday all together? Not even the ACLU is saying that Christmas cannot be a holiday, but Americans are celebrating the birth of Christ – not the birth of some insignificant figure in history. To say that shutting down the government is perfectly acceptable while a depiction of the historical event that is the holiday itself is inconsistent and intellectually dishonest. The nativity scene is as much a part of Christmas, historically and religiously, as the flag is a part and symbol of the 4th of July.

Banning Christmas trees has long been a favorite debate of mine to follow. There is absolutely nothing religious about a tree decorated with lights and ornaments – there is no reference to it in the New Testament and certainly nobody can dispute that the Christmas tree is a relatively new invention. Nevertheless, some towns have decided to ban them and some have come so close to it that the trees have become multicultural displays that seek inclusion at the cost of beauty.

There is something inherently beautiful about a simple tree decorated with lights and ornaments created by the local grade school. It used to be that people would gather in the town center to wait for the mayor to throw the switch and a small party would follow with the local church choir singing carols to welcome in the season. Now cities decorate the “holiday tree” with Menorahs so as not to offend Jews and crescents to not offend Muslims – it is only a matter of time before little Buddha ornaments are created so that people who have no stake in Christmas whatsoever are not offended. Christmas trees are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to banning Christmas symbols, but it still begs the question: why?

What is it about Christmas that makes the ACLU and Americans United so unhappy? Surely it is not their stated objection that they believe that municipal or government recognition of the Christmas holiday is somehow an establishment of religion. That argument rings hollow on so many levels: how is putting up a tree or allowing a choir from a church in town to sing a Christmas song that inevitably contains reference to the reason the holiday exists to begin with establishes a church? If their position were credible there would be at least one person they could trot out to Fox News to say that they converted to Christianity because they saw a Christmas tree at city hall. Sounds absurd, but so is their argument.

It must be that there is and always will be a group of people in the United States who are so fervently against religion that they will find offense in Santa Clause and children putting on a Christmas play in order to purge it from our public square. Atheists and other anti-religious zealots choose Christmas as their most hated holiday because it is the one that most Americans identify with. They figure that if they can get mayors and town councils to ban trees, block Santa, and rid the world of Silent Night, Holy Night, in the name of tolerance that their other anti-religious antics will be easily attained using the same tactics.

It is time that people rise up and tell these religiously anti-religious fanatics that nobody has yet to be turned Christian by gazing upon a Christmas tree and given the examples that the left has provided for role models for children – Santa Clause is a pretty good alternative. If we don’t stop them now it is only a matter of time before they find a judge to find eggnog unconstitutional. Let's help these always unhappy people find happiness in a Christmas tree and choir like the rest of us do.

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Steve Yuhas' columns appear weekly on various other websites. He has appeared on national radio and television including on such notable shows as Larry King Live, Fox News Channel, the CBS Early Show, and countless other national and local television and radio programs bringing common sense and a different view to issues of the day.

© 2002 The Washington Dispatch. All Rights Reserved.

[narses]

Ping

[EagleMamaMT]

Read later.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

Too bad you left out the biggest group of Christian/Jew haters, the secular entire Democrat, traitor/treason Party (with one exception, if you are a Muslim terrorist, you can worship, murder, slaughter babies and Americans whenever you want! That is just peachy with the America hating Democrats!).

[blanknoone]

I for one think it is pretty rediculous to lump atheists together as a group. There are extremists. It doesn't make all atheists extremists the same way that all Christians cannot be painted with the brush of David Duke.

[Possenti]

Many municipalities have outlawed the presence of a baby Jesus in a manger outside city hall.

Perhaps if the Manger scene were splattered with elephant dung, soaked in urine, and the Holy Family and Wisemen were all nude, it would be acceptable?

Heck - even the NEA art critics would support it.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

I also think the ACLU finds the Christmas message offensive because it is a story about the most powerful forces in the world, life, love and forgiveness.

[SamAdams76]

Good points made in the article about Christmas trees and such not even being religious in nature. But so what if they were? I am so into Christmas displays that I go out walking at night in the frigid cold (and snow) to see the displays of my neighbors. Fortunately my town has not succumbed to the political correctness Nazis - the town center is still lit up and decorated every December.

[Orangedog]

Ever Meet a Happy Atheist?

I don't know about that, but a lot of people have a hard time believing that there is a God after meeting my ex wife.

[OldPossum]

Many years ago at this time of year, when you went into a department store there were banners proclaiming "Merry Christmas"; today, they invariably proclaim "Happy Holiday." Now you tell me that this isn't being driven by the PC people.

Also, sales personnel are, I am sure, instructed to wish you a "Happy Holiday," to which I reply "And a Merry Christmas to you, too." Now, darn it, some of those folks may not be Christians or even religious, but I resent Christmas being hijacked into some amorphous holiday with no specificity (sorry about those 50-cent words).

[Raymond Hendrix]

There are many atheists who really don't mind Christmas and enter into the occassion without being offended. But the fanatics among them too often get all the attention. Tolerance is not a dirty word. What ever happened to "live and let live"?

The Blind Atheist

[Tall_Texan]

If the separation of church and state is as absolute as the ACLU and their ilk insist then city, state and federal employees ought to be FORCED to work Christmas and Thanksgiving as if it is any other work day. As taxpayers, they should be demanding it.

If the trial ever comes, I hope it goes before the 9th Circus on it's way to the Supreme Court and then we can see just how nasty a knot the Supremes can tie themselves into trying to justify a federal holiday for Thanksgiving (if you're an atheist, to whom are you giving thanks and why should you get a paid day off on our tax dollars to do it?) and Christmas (read the label - this ain't about Santy Clause).

If we take the ACLU and the separation folks to their logical conclusion, this is where it ends and it speaks volumes that they aren't suing to steal Christmas and Thanksgiving from government workers because they know it would lead to their lynchings in the public square.

[Kenny Bunk]

Celebrating Christmas was illegal in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, When Congregationalism was disestablished as the state's official religion, celebration was again barely tolerated, but not encouraged. The bay state bastards wouldn't even release Maine for statehood until 1820, so Unitarians and Baptists could breathe easier.

[narses]

The issue is control. The left wing jack booted thugs HATE freedom.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Thumbs Up Award!

[southernnorthcarolina]

I think what we have here is a headline, not written by the author but by someone in the typesetting department, which misrepresents the article.

The headline "Ever Meet a Happy Atheist?" go my attention, because I do know happy atheists. And the article quite reasonably points out that there are many non-Christians who have no objection whatever to the celebration of Christmas, including religious symbols. It's the militant atheists, together with such organizations as the ACLU and Americans United (both of which no doubt have some atheist members, but also members of many religions including Christianity [though it's a curious form of Christianity which argues against any public celebration of faith]), who are the villains in this case.

[Kirkwood]

Okay, so what's the story on the Jesus statue? Is that a photoshop creation or does it really exist, and if so, where?

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Really exists. Do a google search of "buddy christ".

[elfman2]

”Ever Meet a Happy Atheist? ”

Ever meet a happy person who posts unprovoked disparaging generalizations?

[elfman2]

” And the article quite reasonably points out that there are many non-Christians who have no objection whatever to the celebration of Christmas, including religious symbols. It's the militant atheists… ”

Too bad. Most atheist will never read it, just figuring the headline’s representative of the article.