I don’t have the Cephalopodmas tree up yet. Lazy. And busy. © C. Ford.
It seems the war on xmas has been lost, oh my.
Combatants in the annual “War on Christmas” have some new data to chew on, thanks to a survey released this week by the Pew Research Center.
While many doubt that Christmas is embattled, as some conservative pundits contend, the new study does suggest American attitudes are changing.
The Pew study, based on interviews conducted in recent weeks with 1,503 adults, found that while a vast majority of Americans still celebrate Christmas, most find the religious elements of the holiday are emphasized less than in the past — and few of them care about that change.
Like much else in the United States, a strong partisan divide runs through the survey results, with responses from Republicans seeming to place an emphasis on religion and those from Democrats on secularism.
But the data complicate efforts to portray Christmas as either in mortal danger or in no trouble at all, a central issue in a years long debate over whether Christmas in America respects Christianity or has been undermined by liberalism.
The NY Times has the full story. A person could get the idea that most people aren’t paying any attention at all to the Tiny Tyrant and his constant declarations of “Merry Christmas!” Moving over to Townhall, for the full obituary:
Those who rightfully believe that Christ needs to be a part of Christmas and those rebelling against the politically correct tyranny looking to strip all spirituality from the holiday have lost.
You have lost. We…have lost.
According to the latest results from the Pew Research Center – and already being gleefully shouted from the rooftops of certain left-leaning media sites orchestrating the campaign against faith-based Christmas – while 90 percent of Americans still celebrate Christmas in one way or another, a majority find that the religious elements of Christmas are emphasized less and less and few of them care about that change.
If accurate, it not only tells us how truly lost we are as a nation, but underscores the dangers of absolute power, discrimination, and propaganda.
Oooh, I can hardly wait to read. Not really. Holy shit, it does go on. A part of it:
A truth the far-left not only ignores, but goes out of its way to deny, is that they have created a strangle-hold on the media, entertainment and academia purely through unethical and often illegal discrimination.
Not surprisingly, the far-left always screams the loudest about the “evils of discrimination” right up until the moment they can use it as a tool to advance their own ideology and goals.
One of the goals they have long sought being the total removal of Christ from Christmas and to transform the day into a secular holiday.
According to the Pew Research Center, that goal will be fully realized in but a few years.
:Snort: I hate to break it to you, but xmas has been long mashed into a commercial goop, and that dates waaaaaaaaaay back, even into your beloved 1950s. It’s all about Santa, gifts, and being told not to groan when it’s slipper socks from Auntie Gladys for 15th year in a row. Every year, it’s gotten more and more commercial, so don’t be moaning about the loss. After all, the pagan roots of this winter festival are long gone too. That’s the way of things.
Now I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have said this until I’m hoarse: go as Christ-y as you want. I. Do. Not. Care. You just have to live with the fact that you don’t own the holiday; and you certainly do not own all the various winter solstice festivals down through the centuries, and there have been many lots. Also, you seem to seriously suck at reading poll data. Maybe you should read the NYT article, it would clear things up a bit. Basically, people just can’t be arsed to give a shit about your manufactured “wars”. Awww.
Unless…at least 50 percent control of the media, entertainment and academia can be regained.
Unless…wealthy and powerful conservatives and Christians stop playing the victim and decide to jump into the arena.
Not to create conservative or religious propaganda sites – which would be just as wrong as what the far-left is now doing – but to bring honesty, fairness and a diversity of opinion back to the media, entertainment and academia.
Oh, such dishonesty. You don’t want honesty, fairness, and a diversity of opinion. You want conservachristian asshole central.
Aside from the wealthy and powerful, everyone from every walk of life who still believes Christ needs to be a part of Christmas – a day only created to celebrate His birth – needs to speak up.
See, this is why no one can take you seriously, you fuckers lie, constantly. Xmas is not a day only created to celebrate your Jesus birthday. A number of solstice festivals were co-opted, and your precious baby god wasn’t fucking born on the 25th of December,* so here’s a thought: get the fuck over it. After all, it’s celebrating a lie, and that’s not a very christian thing to do. Supposedly.
You can read the whole rant here.
*If you want a more compleat rundown, including the older gods whose birthdays were celebrated on 25th December, why it was co-opted, and all the other proposed dates for Jesus’s birthday, see here.
I’m almost done putting up the decorations and today we figured out the seating for Christmas day (21 people do put a strech on space).
Dear Christians, you stole Christmas, you cannot keep it.
Of course, what they actually want is not people celebrating Christmas and saying “Merry Christmas”. What they want is to force everybody to adhere to their own narrow stripe of Christianity.
This survey was about how people perceive the spirit of Christmas past?
I suspect countless generations of Christians have had this vague feeling that the religious message of the holidays isn’t quite as strong nowadays as it used to be.
Lumipuna:
No, it’s about how people (in US) perceive christmas now. Is it a totally religious thing? Is it totally not a religious thing? Is it somewhere inbetween?
Putting Christ back into Christmas couldn’t be easier.
Go to church on Christmas day. Pray.
All the rest is secular.
Sorry, I meant “how people perceive the religiosity of modern Xmas vs. past Xmas”.
Anyway, I’m going to have some oven-baked pagan-era roots (ie. turnips) in my Yule :)
Lumipuna:
Sounds good! Nothing says happy winter solstice like a full belly. :D
Seems to me Douglas MacKinnon is blaspheming America’s other most common religion, consumerism. After all he’s implying that secular celebrations, which still involve buying all sorts of things, are wrong. For that matter he’s blaspheming American conservative Christianity, which tends to see capitalism as part and parcel of worshipping Jesus.
Timgueguen:
Yes. I’m sure he wouldn’t see it that way, after all us lefty liberal secular types never ever tell the truth.
When I read this entry’s lede, my reaction was: “Lost? By which side?”
Stan Freberg’s Green Christmas came out in 1958, cleverly spoofing the commercialism of the holidays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5IXlfJSEi4
DonDueed, I’d never heard that before. Spot on, that. Thanks!
I’m always amused when consumer capitalism is decried as “far-left.” Because that’s what is killing the sectarian Christmas, not “anti-Christian propaganda.” The makers of crap want to be able to sell the maximum amount of crap to the most people, thus Christmas becomes a holiday for everyone to buy crap, regardless of their beliefs. And the biggest pushers of this? Christian culture warriors looking to stick it to those godless commies.
Well, merry fuckin’ giftmas, assholes! You won! Here, have another hollow plastic baby whatsisname for your manger. Don’t forget the lightbulb- it’s no good as a cat bed without it.
Vucodlak:
Yes, yes! :wanders off laughing over the amount of money spent on nativity scenes:
The religious right elements in the extended family eschewed gift/card giving as a show of piety.
Right now, I’m also downplaying the holiday since, unlike the Redhead, I don’t feel the need to celebrate holidays just because they exist on the calendar. Visited some relatives this last week, and will do so again in several weeks, but I won’t be traveling near squidmas/new years holidays.
I can always tell the years when the War is being laid into hard by RW media vs. the years when it’s just background noise by the cards my parents send. Usually they send something vaguely “god bless you and yours this season” and we send winter or ornament themed “have a nice holiday” in return.
Welp, they sent us a card that laid on the Jesus pretty thick this year* so I guess I need to do my part in the war on recognizing other people exist and send them a rebuttal in cardstock form. I’m thinking something with a giant snowflake.
*Although nothing can top the flag-and-eagle “thank you for being the good Christian provider/king of the castle/version of a man we imagine you to be” birthday wishes they sent my touchy-feely non-nationalist atheist Spouse a few years back, White Jesus’s face offering us Christmas wishes comes close. I’d show a picture, but it rather quickly became confetti.
Yes, it’s a passive aggressive war of cards. They started it.
“One of the goals they have long sought being the total removal of Christ from Christmas and to transform the day into a secular holiday.”
Really? How’s about watching the classic movie, A Christmas Story? It depicts what Christmas was like in 1939. Lots of holiday stuff, lots about presents, pretty much zero Jesus. Santa, that corporate spokesma, is prominent though -- guess who thought him up? Hint, not secularists.
Onamission5, a few years ago I had a box of Christmas cards depicting the traditional manger in the distance with holy light from a star shining down on it. I wrote word balloons on them that said, “Its’ a girl” before I sent them out.
That “truth” he says about progressives taking over media, entertainment, and academia through discrimination is a flat out lie. For one thing, a good chunk of the media is already controlled by right wingers. You have Fox News, Breitbart, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Town Hall, Daily Caller, etc. Just because left-leaning (really just centrist) media organizations like MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post exist doesn’t mean that they have a stranglehold on the media industry.
As for entertainment, conservatives by and large just don’t give a shit about creative industries. They don’t care about becoming authors, or artists, or filmmakers, or anything else like that, unless they can use what they make as a vehicle for pushing their ideology far more overtly and militantly than any of the media they claim has a “liberal agenda”. Once these people stop laughing about getting a degree in writing or art, they can start complaining about how conservatives are supposedly being turned away from jobs in the entertainment industry.
Speaking of academia, the problem isn’t that academic institutions are actively discriminating against conservatives. With regards to science, the problem is that progressives, centrists, and the increasingly rare moderate conservatives simply have no problem accepting what the results of research on evolution and climate change say. The far right chooses to attack scientific evidence that it doesn’t like. Conservatives aren’t going to get anywhere in academia by trying to present simplistic religious myths as hard science, nor if they act as corporate mouthpieces and deny the damage to the environment and human health caused by said corporations.
With regards to humanities and social sciences, it’s usually the same situation as with creative disciplines. Conservatives think of college as a place to get a degree that lets them earn lots of money, so they think degrees in anthropology or world history are worthless. Also, similarly to the natural sciences, you’re going to be rightly laughed out of the room if your supposed insight into human society is self-serving, simplistic horseshit about how white, Christian “alpha males” deserve to run society and are the only people in the world who matter or have ever achieved anything worth talking about.
Overall, in both academia and in entertainment, if a huge part of your ideology involves demeaning or expressing outright hostility towards entire groups of people like immigrants, people of color, LGBT people, or women, then you’re advertising that you don’t respect a good chunk of your colleagues, students, coworkers, etc. and won’t be able to work with them professionally.