Nordicity: No, Virginia... (A Canadian Liberal's Lament at Christmas)

Yukon News ^ | December 20, 2004 | Al Pope

[Dont Mention the War]

NOR DICITY

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Al Pope, December 20, 2004

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No, Virginia...

“I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say that there is no Santa Claus … Please tell me the truth.” Virginia O’Hanlon, 1897, a letter to the New York Sun.

Virginia, I only wish that I could tell you your little friends were wrong, that God is in his Heaven, Santa in his workshop, and all right with the world of good girls and boys. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Every day while you play, good girls and boys around the world suffer and die in prisons, brothels and labor camps. Across the sea, good little children shiver in their beds at the sound of an airplane, and wonder when their turn will come to die under the rubble of their homes.

What, Santa Claus real? You might as well say that there is no such thing as hunger, that poor children never sleep on the street while bankers bloat themselves on six-figure salaries. Virginia, some people even complain that not enough children are in prison. They say this though they know that to imprison a child is the surest way to turn a single mistake into a life of crime. Why do they want to lock away the children? Because they are so poor in spirit as to hate and fear the young.

What a world it would be, if only a jolly elf could come down once a year, and bring sweetness, light, and plum pudding to all the children of the world, one half of whom go without enough to eat. What a better place if one magic sled could do the job that a hundred aid organizations can never manage, because there are never enough resources.

Santa Claus won't be coming to the murdered children of Fallujah this year, nor to the little sex-slaves of Bangkok. He won't be visiting the children crippled by cluster bombs or torn open by shrapnel. There will be no Santa for the orphans of Afghanistan or Palestine. In the birthplace of the Prince of Peace, there will be no peace this Christmas.

Santa Claus does not exist, as surely as hatred and greed and violence rule the world. Alas Virginia, how dreary life is for Santa’s real helpers, the Asian children who labor to manufacture the war toys under your tree. There’s no childlike faith on the factory floor, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable their daily existence.

Every day around the world, the lights of childhood are snuffed out by war, famine, and disease. Children go without education, without proper clothing, without clean water, without homes, without medicine or food. Without a safe place to play, away from the guns and the tanks. Without a childhood.

No Virginia, there isn't a Santa Claus. He is only a part of our annual pretense that the nineteenth century, century of poor-houses and public hangings, was a better, more innocent time than this. We play this charade although we know it was in fact a brutal era of unconscionable wealth for a few made possible by the slavery of many, a time in which much of the world still lives, and back toward which the rest of us are rushing at ever increasing speed.

Santa Claus real? If he were what a back-breaking load of coal his poor reindeer must carry to the rooftops of those corporations that employ third-world children in airless factories, guzzling the earth’s resources and destroying its atmosphere to create useless junk you and your friends will break and throw in the landfill before the new year. Alas, Virginia, such children as these will not be placated with the charming myth of an infinitely generous bearded gnome, who brings the fruits of their slavery into the homes of more fortunate children.

Believe in Santa Claus! You might as well believe in the hypocrites who use religion to justify war, who celebrate the birth of Jesus and fatten their wallets on the murder of innocents and the enslavement of the poor.

Fight, Virginia. Until your childish frame grows old, until you stretch it out for its last sleep, fight. Fight against militarism, greed, and indifference. Fight against charming lies and ugly truths. Never cease demanding that every day for every child be, if not Christmas, then at least a decent day on earth.

No Virginia, there isn't a Santa Claus, just yet. But there can be if we try hard enough. Let's start by making a big wish, not for lots of presents, or a glimpse of Santa Claus, or fairies on our lawn, but for something even more fundamental to the spirit of Christmas.

Let’s wish for Peace on Earth, and Goodwill to all. And then for once let’s act like the words mean something.


Al Pope's novel, Bad Latitudes, was released this year by Turnstone Press.
Al's plays have appeared onstage and on CBC Radio, his short fiction and
poetry are published in journals and anthologies. His award-winning column,
Nordicity, appears weekly in the Yukon News, and at:
Al Pope Dot Com

[Dont Mention the War]

The feel-good column of the holiday season!

[Dont Mention the War]

I've decided to start a Miseraliberal ping list for off-the-scale leftist moonbat columns such as these. Freepmail me or post in this thread if you want to be added. I doubt the ping list will get more than two or three hits a week.

[Reaganesque]

To: Al Pope

Re: "No Virginia..."

Memo:

Lighten up Francis!

[383rr]

Where's the barf alert?

[Denver Ditdat]

Set this whinging screed to the tune of "The International" and the ACLU will have something to worship during the "holiday season".

If one is to judge by the bitter diatribe in this column and the sullen scowl he wears in his publicity photo, Mr. Pope must be the life of the party wherever he goes.

[Cindy]

ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Believe in Santa Claus! You might as well believe in the hypocrites who use religion to justify war, who celebrate the birth of Jesus and fatten their wallets on the murder of innocents and the enslavement of the poor."

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Well, for a minute there I thought I was reading a column on one of those jihad boards or a DnCer-type web page.

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Obviously this columnist did not really want to talk about CHRISTmas which is the celebration of CHRIST.

Nope.

He wanted to spew forth his values in the form of a column.
And -- it shows.

[stands2reason]

After the second paragraph, I could hear the voice of Newman the postman on Seinfeld reciting it.

Try it yourself. It's fun! Just substitute the name "Jerry" for each "Virginia."

[The Loan Arranger]

Note to Al: Communism lost, Marx was shown to be a flawed, Utopian, myopic dreamer (at best) and your heroes Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Che, Ho Chi Mihn and Kim Il Sung were mass murderers, enslavers of millions (more than any "robber baron" ever could), godless heathens and hypocrites of major-league proportions. All of your heroes lived like Oriental sultans, whilst exhorting the "proletariat" to ever increasing sacrifices, even unto death. You are a sick, twisted, foolish individual, and a symptom of why your nation is in decline. We would be doing you a favor by annexing your sparsely populated frozen Popsicle of a country, but why bother?

[Calpernia]

What a terrible blog.

Yes CHRISTmas is about the birth of Christ. Yes there is world suffering.

And Santa Claus may have birthed from the world's greatest advertising campaign I've ever seen; but it back handedly became a cultural bridge to merge traditions of La Befana, St. St Nicholes, the 3 Wiseman etc. While maintaining the true spirit of CHRISTmas.

[Billthedrill]

There are children in Afghanistan - female children - learning to read and not getting shot for it anymore. There are children in Iraq who will grow up to vote and not be afraid of the executioner for dissenting. There is a Santa Claus for these children, a guy who came in through the air and gave them this incredible gift. He isn't in a red suit, he's wearing camo and missing his own children, thousands of miles away.

And those little girls learning to read will, I hope, not remember people like our author, who fought tooth and nail against their ability to do so and ignore it, misrepresent it, or bewail it mightily even as they turn their first pages. They owe him nothing.

[LibertyGirl77]

Wow, what a ray of sunshine he is.

[Petronski]

Sheesh, what a prick.

[prayerwarriorJK]

For someone who is supposedly condemning hatred, he sure spits out a lot of it.

[prayerwarriorJK]

For someone who is supposedly condemning hatred, he sure spits out a lot of it.

[LibertarianInExile]

I hope Virginia doesn't read this and grow up into an embittered liberal like him.

Virginia, not only is there a Santa Claus, he doesn't live anywhere near Canada, because they see his red suit and think he's from Jesusland. And he doesn't have much truck with liberal pukes, anyway. He's into right and wrong, not permanent shades of gray, so he'll probably think you were pretty naughty for writing this letter to a commie water-carrier. :)

[LibertarianInExile]

ROFLMAO.

Hello, Newwwman. [icily]

[jocon307]

Let's cut the cr*p and just say, THIS MAN WILL ROT IN HELL, along with others who have paved the way there with their so-called "good intentions".

[piasa]

This guy is just bitter because he's been a selfish, naughty pimp for mass-murdering pinkos all his life and every Chistmas he gets nothing but switches and lumps of coal.

[piasa]

What a better place if one magic sled could do the job that a hundred aid organizations can never manage, because there are never enough resources.

There would be considerably resources if they weren't always squandered by corrupt international socialists heading those organizations- See the UN Oil-for-Food program for starters. (Mother of all bribery cases- and it wasn't the GOP the Iraqi regime was bribing, either. The ones on the list were communist and socialist groups all over the globe, noted 'antiwar' peace at any price liberals, militant leftwingers, DNC favorites and other assorted bums, all bribed so that the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein could hang on and kill, torture, mutilate, rape, shred, fry, dissolve, bomb, and feed to animals more and more people every day...directly or through the terrorist groups Iraq supported.)

Another group of foundations allegedly into 'aid' are those of Teresa Heinz and George Soros- none are intended to do humanity any good.

Planned Parenthood's another deceptive 'aid organization' - spawned by racist leftists that wanted to use population control to rid the world of black people, among other groups they deemed inferior.

Oh, and let's not forget the most notorious 'humanitarian aid organizations' of all- Global Relief, Help the Needy, Feed Africa People, and so on- scores of Islamic "charities" that acted and in some cases still act as front, feeder and recruiter groups for terrorists trying to kill us - including the idiotic leftwing suicidal dorks who write useless screeds like the one at the top of the thread.