More on the "War on Christmas" nonsense

Readers of this blog will no doubt be shocked, yes, shocked to learn that many of the bloody shirts being waved by the right wing these last few weeks are, in fact, white as the driven snow, and crisply starched and pressed as well. This lengthy Washington Post article does something rare in this tempest in a teapot, which is -- wait for it -- actual reporting and fact-checking.

The school in Wisconsin that rewrote the words to "Silent Night?" Didn't happen:

The first thing we found out, contrary to both news releases, is that nobody at the school rewrote anything. The song is part of a copyrighted play. Really in-depth reporting -- making two phone calls -- revealed the offending playwright and composer to be one Dwight Elrich. No one had talked to him until we called.

[...]

"I'm just flabbergasted. I'm a choir director in a church! I do Christmas carols in retirement homes! I perform 'Silent Night' 40 or 50 times each year! I thought the play was a really charming, wonderful, positive story about love and acceptance . . . removing it from the Christian tradition was something I never thought anyone could ever come up with. We were telling a story about a little tree, so we used a familiar tune to help the kids get it."

The school in Texas that banned red and green? Didn't happen:

Here's a corresponding memo from Doug Otto, superintendent of schools for Plano:

"The school district does not restrict students or staff from wearing certain color clothes during holiday times or any other school days. . . . Our attorney requested of Mr. O'Reilly that, in the future, he ask his fact checkers to do a more thorough job of confirming the facts before he airs them."

O'Reilly did not correct his broadcast in a prepared statement, instead noting that there was ongoing litigation about other Christmas-related issues at the school.

And the gnashing of teeth over the ruination of Christmas has been going on for a very, very long time:

And there is one problem with that pristine image of the American Ghost of Christmas Past, he and others say: It never quite existed. "White Christmas" -- which became one of the best-selling songs of all time -- was already lamenting a season "just like the ones I used to know" in 1939. The same year, entrepreneur Charles Howard opened one of the first Santa Claus schools, dismayed by the cynical crush of "bums, ham actors, and thousands of odd job men" who were cashing in by playing the man in red.

Facts, of course, aren't going to sway the Christmas warriors, but it's nice to have them -- the facts, that is, not the Christmas warriors -- out there.

And on that note, posting will be intermittent-to-nonexistent until after Christmas. Happy Holidays!

This is not the John Byrne they're looking for

I have often been stunned at the usefulness of online recommendations from vendors like Amazon and Netflix. Sometimes, however, you get a message like this:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have purchased books by Steve Englehart often purchased books by John Byrne. For this reason you might like to know that John Byrne's newest book, Transforming Power: Energy As a Social Project (Energy and Environmental Policy), will be released in paperback soon. You can pre-order your copy by following the link below.

Meanwhile, at the Absorbascon...

...Aquaman reacts to DC's plans to revamp his title by replacing him. Is it me or is the latest round of replacing DC's characters with newer, hepper versions of them reminiscent of the dark days of the early-to-mid 90s, when just about all of DC's comics except Mark Waid's Flash and Impulse sucked?

John Spencer

I've never watched The West Wing, except for a few minutes here and there on cable, but I was saddened to read about the death of John Spencer last week. A few years ago, my parents saw him in a restaurant while they were visiting New York City and it made their trip. He'll be missed.

Cal Thomas has a moment of lucidity

I rarely, if ever, agree with right-wing columnist Cal Thomas -- or much of anything posted at TownHall.com -- but I'm entertained by his column using Scripture, Christmas songs, and, well, actualy Christianity to knock the wind out of the histrionic and bogus "War on Christmas" meme. Here's just a taste:

I have never understood why so many Christians feel the need to see and hear "Merry Christmas" proclaimed to them at stores by people who may not believe its central message. While TV personalities, junk mail letters and some of the ordained bemoan the increasing secularization of culture; perhaps some teaching might be helpful from the One in whose behalf they claim to speak.

[...]

Paul the Apostle said, "We live by faith, not by sight." (2 Cor. 5:7). Jesus spoke a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven resembling a treasure hidden in a field (Matthew 13:44). The Apostle John warned, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." (1 John 2:15-17)

Let's see: Should the crass commercialization of "Christmas" and the focus on accumulating and giving stuff (each sold separately; batteries not included) be part of this indictment? Even a casual observer or biblical illiterate might reasonably draw such a conclusion.

What mystifies me -- among other things in this nonsensical pice of astroturf outrage -- is that the bleating drones who demand that everyone scream "Merry Christmas" as loudly and joylessly as they want them to don't seem to give a rat's ass about Easter, which is a far, far more significant Christian holiday. After all, everybody gets born. But there's only one guy who came back to life...

Threes

Everyone always remarks that deaths come in threes when someone famous dies. But losing Robert Sheckley, Richard Pryor, and Eugene McCarthy in the space of 36 hours is just plain depressing.

Motes, planks, yada yada...

John Scalzi weighs in on the ridiculous "War on Christmas" (TM) kerfuffle, with the observation that some Christian megachurches will be closed on Christmas (which seems, to my Catholic eyes, to be especially heinous or amusing or both since Christmas falls on a Sunday this year):

This is definitely one of those "mote in the eye" moments for the Merry Christmas Militants. How can a certain breed of willfully excitable Christian tell the rest of the world that saying "Happy Holidays" is just like stabbing Jesus in the crotch, if some of their more casual Christ's Club, arena-filling brethren can't even bother to pop in at Mary and Joe's place on Christmas day, and send their greetings to the birthday boy? I mean, really, who's crotch-stabbing Jesus now?
[...]
So, to arms, you Merry Christmas Militants! Those lazy no-church-on-Christmas-Sunday so-called "Christians" are making a mockery of your cause and values! Quell these vipers in your midst! I think Bill O'Reilly bludgeoning the pastors of these churches with a peppermint-striped truncheon live on Fox News would be a wholesome and instructive start. It would really show everyone the spirit of the season -- or at the very least, the spirit some folks would like to see applied to the season, and those people are really the only people who count. And they wouldn't want these other "Christians" to make them look bad.

Christmas: If you're not with us, you're against us. Especially if you're Christian. Yes, yes. That's what Jesus was all about.

What would Charlie Brown do?

The right-wing wailing and gnashing of teeth over the nonexistent "war on Christmas" (TM) continues this year without missing a beat from last year's nonsense. The latest perpetrator? George W. Bush:

Religious conservatives are miffed because they have been pressuring stores to advertise Christmas sales rather than "holiday specials" and urging schools to let students out for Christmas vacation rather than for "winter break." They celebrated when House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) insisted that the sparkling spectacle on the Capitol lawn should be called the Capitol Christmas Tree, not a holiday spruce.

Then along comes a generic season's greeting from the White House, paid for by the Republican National Committee. The cover art is also secular, if not humanist: It shows the presidential pets -- two dogs and a cat -- frolicking on a snowy White House lawn.

"Certainly President and Mrs. Bush, because of their faith, celebrate Christmas," said Susan Whitson, Laura Bush's press secretary. "Their cards in recent years have included best wishes for a holiday season, rather than Christmas wishes, because they are sent to people of all faiths."

It's almost as if it's about good manners rather than using faith as a cudgel.

Coincidentally, tonight saw ABC air the only Christmas special I enjoy and the only one that deals with the true spirit of Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas. That was the special where Linus' heartfelt recitation of the Christmas story inspired Charlie Brown and, after a while, the other kids, and they celebrated Christ's birth by decorating a humble tree and singing a carol. That's where the special ends, and while we don't know what Charlie Brown and Snoopy and the rest of the gang did after their song, I really, really doubt they went out and screamed at shopkeepers for providing insufficient validation for their faith.

Mama never actually said there'd be office hours like these, and with good reason.

I'm not sure if this counts as the best office hours ever or the worst.