The War Against Christmas, sponsored by the War Against Christmas

[acroyear]

Evolving Thoughts The new war on Christmas:

A new war on Christmas is being waged... by a pastor. Forget those secular humanists; the real danger to traditional Christmas is the religious. Santa is "a blasphemous stand-in for God who makes liars of parents and causes confusion among children."

Why do they hate Christmas? And, presumably, Democracy... damned terrorists.

Well, that's actually an OLD war. Back in the early 80s my evangelical neighbors were repeating anti-Santa rhetoric from some of the lesser-known TV evangelists at the time (granted, Baker was riding at the top of his game before his fall, and Roberts was one year away from testifying before a nation that God was a blackmail artist, so these lesser-seen ones had reasons to not be noticed by the general public at the time).

Mind you, that didn't stop them from having a tree and putting presents under it, but they didn't use "Santa" as a reason for it.

The war against "Santa", which goes with the wholesale replacement of "Christmas Carols" with "Holiday Songs" (see Uncertain Principles from yesterday), is an old war.  Oddly enough, self-proclaimed secular humanist, Charles Schultz, actually fired the first salvo for the "Jesus" side in the first Peanuts TV special.

Comments

[katrinb.livejournal.com]

Schultz didn't exclude Santa and the tree, he just made them peripheral to the religious meaning that (for him and most Christians) is at the center of the holiday. By me, that's fair enough, and even admirable (after all, for me Santa and the tree is also peripheral to the religious meaning of the holiday - I just have a different religion and hence a (slightly) different meaning. It's still rebirth and renewal and bringing light and generosity into the dark time of the year - it's just a different newborn God.)
By me, it's fair enough even for Christians to reject Santa and the tree completely. Just so long as they don't insist the rest of us do so. *shrug*