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The Unholiday 12/19/2005 Remember the ad for the “uncola” soft drink? Here’s to making the unholiday as unmemorable.
Merchants trying to make Christmas a generic, cash-cow holiday are losing money. The “Return Christ to Christmas” backlash against the unholiday peddlers has driven some to retail repentance.
Some holdouts are still running ads promising, “Order by Friday for holiday delivery.” If it weren’t for getting trapped in corporate voice-jail, I’d be tempted to call and ask, “Which holiday would that be, the 4th of July, Labor Day? I’m clueless. I need it for the one when you guys have all the tinsel, trees, red and green ribbons, stars, wreathes, poinsettias, the fat guy in the red suit? Help me out here. What do we call that?”
Then there are the unjolly faces filling public media places telling us we have to keep Christmas out of public places. Don’t you know, they ask with patronizing condescension, you’re free to celebrate Christmas all you want in your homes and churches? Can’t you just be satisfied with that?
I wonder if they confine their birthday parties to their homes or “force” it on the rest of us with celebrations in restaurants capped off by a dozen waiters and waitresses singing off-key, hand-clapping choruses of “Happy Birthday” to them instead of everybody else.
One would hope that instead of pushing the rest of us to evict Jesus from His birthday party, they’d busy themselves investigating why it is that for two millennia, hundreds of millions of people of all ages, races, classes and nations have worshipped, lived and died for the Christ of Christmas.
We’re supposed to hide out until things get worse before we speak up. And by the way, how long will it be until the unholiday forces are trying to outlaw our decorated homes and lawn crèches because they might offend our non-Christian neighbors? These displays are publicly visible so “they’re not really private,” will be the complaint. If you think that’s exaggerated, try this:
The sign at a privately owned McDonald’s on the corner of Falls of Neuse and Spring Forest Road in Raleigh, North Carolina, reads: “Merry Christmas, Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” According to WRAL-TV, December 14, “It is a holiday message that Amanda Alpert thinks comes on a little too strongly. ‘It offends me because it specifically talks about Jesus, Merry Christmas. It doesn’t give credit to anyone else,” Alpert said. Alpert says she’s offended as a Jew.
Thankfully, there are other Jews of good will who are standing with Christians to keep our sacred day alive and well in the public square. Syndicated columnist Don Feder has formed an organization, “Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation” (JAACD), for that purpose.
Don’s advisory board includes Mona Charen, syndicated columnist; Natalie B. Choate, attorney; Rabbi David Dalin, professor, University of Toronto; Barry Farber, columnist and talk-show host; Raoul Felder, author; Beth Galinsky, Jewish Action Alliance; Rabbi Joshua Haberman, Foundation for Jewish Studies; Bruce Herschensohn, professor, Pepperdine University; David Horowitz, Center for the Study of Popular Culture; Michael Horowitz, Hudson Institute; Jeff Jacoby, columnist, The Boston Globe; Binyamin Jokolvsky, Jewish World Review; Jeff Katz, attorney; Morton Klein, Zionist Organization of America; Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Toward Tradition; Barbara Ledeen, Jewish Republican activist; Rabbi Yehuda Levin, Jews for Morality; Herb London, Hudson Institute; Jackie Mason, entertainer; Michael Medved, syndicated talk-show host; Rabbi Jacob Neusner, professor, Bard College; Judith Reisman, author; Rabbi Aryeh Spero, Caucus for America, and Herb Zeibon, Americans for a Safe Israel.
To them we say thank you, God bless you and Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas! You can visit their Web site at www.Jews4fairness.org.
Then there’s the taxpayer-funded Ridgeway Elementary School in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, where school administrators saw the Christmas light after feeling the heat from calls and e-mails protesting a ban on Silent Night. School district officials announced December 14 that they had withdrawn their substitution of “Cold in the Night,” sung to the tune of Silent Night, in the school’s “winter program.” There was already room in the school inn for Santa Claus, Kwanza, Menorahs, and La Befana, a Christmas witch, but not Jesus. Thanks to folks who inundated school officials with protests, the district administrator confirmed that Silent Night will be sung once again.
Think about it. They took the melody of a classic carol about the birth of Christ that promises hope, light, peace and salvation and substituted a dreary lyric that cries for all that is promised in the words they rejected. And these are educators. But the tarnished star atop the unholiday’s bramble bush has to be the self-anointed cardinal of Congress, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts). Kennedy reached a new low on the floor of the Senate Monday where, in his relentless pursuit of political advantage, he expounded the gospel according to Ted: Rather than debate whether the word “Christmas” should appear in our stores and on our greeting cards, shouldn’t we be living out the hope that came from the first Christmas and do more for our fellow citizens than greater tax breaks for the rich and greater hardship for the poor and everyone else? There you have it. Mary and Joseph’s real mission in Bethlehem was to protest Herod’s wealth and the lack of affordable housing for the poor. Why else would a woman several months pregnant take a back-numbing donkey ride of 60-80 miles? The real hope of Christmas isn’t Jesus saving us from our sins—it’s politicians saving us from the rich. The unholiday is what’s left when Christ is removed from Christmas—beautifully wrapped gifts but empty of all that Jesus came to give: joy, hope, love, salvation—good news for all people. If you think it’s worth having—it’s worth keeping—and it’s worth debating. “Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child” (Luke 2:17, NKJV). Let’s go and do likewise.
Merry Christmas! |
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