Atomic Nerds

Ken over at Popehat already said much of what I would have and likely more articulately at that, but I figure if I adopt a policy of not saying anything someone else hadn’t said better this blog would default to a posting schedule of once a month at best.

Ken was inspired by the ever-reliably-mockable American Family Association, I was inspired by this: Minister Declares End to War On Christmas.

Okay. I have two pieces of news. First, there is no “war on Christmas”. Second, if there was, Christians wouldn’t want to win it.

The “war on Christmas” as this minister and the American Family Association allude to is a politically correct tendency on the part of corporations and political entities that care about such things to strip explicit references to Christianity from generic greetings, well-wishes, and celebrations meant to be all-inclusive. I personally fall into a giant yawning pit of apathy on this issue; on the one hand, minorities have no right not to be reminded that they are a minority, and not using the C-word when the landscape surrounds us with Santa Claus, trees, bells, carols, and the occasional nativity scene strikes me as politically correct silliness in the extreme.

On the other hand, majorities equally have no right to be constantly pandered to and reassured that they are the majority, and insisting on total and universal acknowledgment of TEH CHRISTIAN when their holiday essentially takes over an entire month of the Western year and said nativites and Christmas paraphernalia are so universal is as entitled and asinine as trying to skirt around it is silly.

There isn’t a war on Christmas. Christmas squats upon December in total cultural domination, and extrudes tentacles further outward every year. Businesses are wildly, rabidly in favor of Christmas, because it’s the biggest spending event of the entire year. Governments are in favor of it because it boosts the economy, and also because a population happily occupied with the holidays is one that’s probably not paying it a great deal of attention. Businesses and the odd public organization try to avoid the C-word not because they actually disapprove of Christmas, but because they think they can get more business and more successful events by being inclusive of people that do not, in fact, celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

Take a second look at all the merry holiday stuff scattered over the landscape. Evergreen tree? Pagan symbol. Mistletoe? Likewise. Santa Claus? Shadows of various pagan gods wrapped in a red suit and given a sanitizing connection to a saint no one outside of a few European countries remembers. Even the fact that it’s a winter festival is pagan; Christ was likely born in mid-spring. The Church explicitly set out to deal with the pagans by assimilating and supplanting their pre-existing traditions, which, unsurprisingly for a northern people, included solstice festivals that revolved around feasting, symbolic greenery, and a celebration of light and its eventual return and revival of the land. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and the result is the leviathan that is the modern, mostly-secular, cultural Christmas experience.

If even atheists like me are more or less participating in Christmas because the feasting is nice and it’s a good excuse to get together with the family and give presents and enjoy each others’ company (or not), this should be a big flashing neon sign to Christians that further extending and solidifying the Christian brand name on the holiday isn’t a good idea. It would further what is already going on and what Christianity is fighting against: the branding of Christ, away from a faith and into a generic group identity. The fact that nativity scenes are in the same category as Christmas trees and wreaths and candy cane decorations says that to a large extent, this has already happened: Christmas isn’t about Christ, Christ is step number whatever in Doing The Holiday, the boring bit but the kiddies are so cute in the pageant.

If you make the apathetic, the well-meaning but disinterested, and the actively nonChristian constantly mouth acknowledgment of Christ as part of the holiday experience, you don’t strengthen faith in Christ, you strengthen the name and the concept and the entire faith as something to be mouthed as ritual. I assure you, I have watched what must be hundreds of retellings of the birth of Christ at this point and it hasn’t affected that theism thing one iota. It will not have such an effect on anyone else either.

Of course, if your objection to secularized commercial Christmas isn’t that it isn’t really Christian but rather that you want your brand name to definitively be Christ, Inc, with everyone pressured to go along, well… Merry Christmas and God bless, brother. Satisfied?

Posted Ranting, small gods |