Saturday, December 03, 2005

God Rest Ye, De-Ranged Gentlemen!

The religious right, driven into a frenzy of group-think by Bill O'Reilly and other cheerleaders with a political axe to grind, are mounting a holy war against an imaginary enemy that they've been told is trying to take Christ out of Christmas. They go into paroxysms of teeth-grinding when they see the locution "Happy Holidays" rather than Merry Christmas. It's all a plot, they're saying, to de-christianize America.

It's all a bunch of mind rot caused by watching too much Fox News ... is what it is.

Last Christmas, during a family program, I remember suddenly hearing my father-in-law seriously announcing that there were forces in America trying to prevent our observing Christ's birthday. He wasn't absolutely sure, but he'd been told that those mysterious forces were more or less synonymous with the Democratic Party.

An article in today's News & Observer will show you how far that particular hysteria has spread. Members of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, for example, are beginning to resemble certain small characters in Monty Python's "The Life of Bryan." They're agitating with Raleigh city government to have displays on public property of The Nativity scene, including the Holy Reindeer and the Sacred Snowflake. No, really.

When I was a wee elementary school student in west Texas, we were writing compositions about the need to "Put Christ Back Into Christmas." But we thought it was all about the over-commercialization of the holiday. Now O'Reilly and the Christian mullahs are complaining that we don't have ENOUGH commercialization of Christmas. They're boycotting Target, for example, for not plastering the name of Christ all over those holiday Tupperware displays.

They're off their holy rockers.

ADDENDUM: There's a good editorial on this topic in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. Yes, Fort Wayne, Indiana.

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