Much has been made this holiday season about an alleged "war on Christmas," waged, it is said, by department store chains, activist judges, the ACLU, various school districts and other hotbeds of secular humanism.
On Dec. 9, serial liar Bill O'Reilly told his audience that unnamed officials in Saginaw, Mich., "oppose red and green clothing on anyone" during the holiday season, which would be outrageous if it were true, which it isn't.
In fact, as Saginaw Township Supervisor Tim Braun pointed out to the local TV station, the town hall is completely covered with red and green Christmas lights.
Undeterred by inconvenient truth, O'Reilly then singled out the school district in Plano, Texas, which he said "told students they couldn't wear red and green because they were the Christmas colors."
School superintendent Dr. Doug Otto referred the matter to the district's attorneys.
"The school district does not restrict students or staff from wearing certain color clothes during holiday times or any other school days," he said.
You would think an outfit as big as Fox News would have fact checkers to catch little things like these before O'Reilly goes out and makes a big horse's ass out of himself. But there have been no apologies to the good people of Saginaw or Plano. If anything, O'Reilly has ramped up the invective as the holiday approaches.
"I'm gonna use all the power that I have on radio and television to bring horror into the world of people who are trying to do that," he said of those who would be so dastardly as to substitute "Happy Holidays" for "Merry Christmas."
How's that for peace on earth, good will toward men?
Maybe if O'Reilly and the other conservative idiots pimping this phony war on Christmas did a bit of reading on the origin of the holiday, they wouldn't be so quick to defend it.
Because the Yuletide celebration goes back considerably further than the birth of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago.
Most famously, the Romans celebrated their Saturnalia with seven days of drinking, feasting and gift-giving around this time of year. Their neighbors to the north, the Celts, had their own version of the holiday, one that involved the lighting of trees, decorative wreaths and kissing under the mistletoe.
The church didn't get around to assigning a birthday to Jesus until 336 A.D., and most scholars believe Dec. 25 was chosen because people still celebrated the pagan festivals despite having become nominally Christian.
So deeply entrenched were the pagan origins of the holiday that the Puritan pilgrims of New England outlawed the celebration of Christmas entirely.
"Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas and the like, either by feasting, forbearing labor, or any other way ... every such person so offending shall pay for each offense five shillings as a fine to the country," read the early statute.
And Puritan clergyman Increase Mather found Christmas nothing but "mad mirth ... highly dishonorable to the name of Christ."
It wasn't until 1877 that our most alcoholic of presidents, Ulysses S. Grant, signed a law making Christmas a federal holiday, paving the way for countless office parties celebrants have difficulty remembering afterward. A fitting legacy if ever there was one.
Not even the pious Pope Benedict XVI agrees with O'Reilly and his ilk. Speaking on Dec. 11, the pope said that rampant consumerism, not the ACLU, was the biggest threat to Christmas.
"In today's consumer society, this time is unfortunately subjected to a sort of commercial 'pollution' that is in danger of altering its true spirit," he said. O'Reilly would likely say the pontiff is out of touch, as he did when Pope John Paul II came out against the American invasion of Iraq.
Or could it be that his phony campaign to save Christmas is nothing more than a cynical ploy to get people to think about something other than how badly the war is going, how poor President George W. Bush's approval ratings are, or how miserable Christmas will actually be for the tens of thousands of American workers laid off in recent months by General Motors, Delphi, IBM, Kodak and other multinational corporations?
When you think about it in that light, the whole thing starts to make sense. Sure, it makes sense in a creepy, twisted sort of way, but O'Reilly's a creepy, twisted sort of guy.
Remember his falafel fantasy?
Anyway, here's hoping you have the best Christmas ever. Or the best Hanukkah. Or the best Kwanzaa. Or the best Saturnalia or Yuletide.
Now, isn't it just easier saying "Happy Holidays"?
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 20 2005 |