12/19/2006
A very impressive aspect of the War on Christmas this year is the huge, thunderous barrage with which the other side opened. All at once, from all over the place, article after article appeared, announcing there was no such thing as a War against Christmas. Quite frequently these were laced with remarks of varying degrees of unpleasantness directed at those who cherish the festival.
This assertion, of course, is a willful denial of objective reality, a.k.a. a lie. The VDARE.com Christmas Competition archive, which by now has documented well over a hundred incidents over seven years, is perhaps the most efficient refutation on the internet. (Thanks, blogger SWAC Girl, for noting this.)
But I saw another method the other day, looking at the Wedding Press cutting book of friends married in January 1956. Most of the cuttings were bordered by Christmas advertising. Even those who know what has been going on would be astonished by the freedom and vivacity with which Christmas was named in America in those days. (Dissidents used the euphemism … Yuletide.)
Not only is it a lie, it is also, after the first two or three examples, boring. Can there ever have been a time when so many professional writers have been able to go on auto pilot and turn in the same piece? Didn’t the editors think plagiarism?
The webzine Media Matters For America (no friend of VDARE.com’s) has performed a valuable service by documenting this (with hyperlinks). They
surveyed the newspapers in the Nexis database called "News, All (English, Full Text)" to examine how the allegations of a political attack on the Christmas holiday have been treated by editorial boards, columnists, and other commentators … the articles were divided first by "editorial" — unsigned pieces that express the opinion of a newspaper’s editorial board and thus the official position of the paper — and "opinion pieces," signed commentaries that include op-ed pieces and columns that appear on a newspaper’s editorial and opinion pages. We then sorted further into these two categories: 1) The author accepted the premise that there is indeed a "war" on Christmas … 2) The author dismissed the claim of a concerted attack on the Christmas holiday, disputed the existence of any major affront to Christianity, or described the entire "conflict" as generally exaggerated.
The results were 18 articles supporting the "war on Christmas" concept, and 106 rejecting it.
Unsurprisingly, the prestige media were overwhelmingly Christmas War deniers. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, etc, etc. Investors Business Daily and The Christian Science Monitor were perhaps the leading affirmers. Most of the rest were smaller papers, quite a few Canadian.
The Deniers may say there is no war, but they are certainly behaving in such a disciplined and concerted way that they appear to be fighting one.
As indeed they are. Hat Tip Vox Day, who observes
Christians and non-religious keepers of the Western cultural tradition across the nation must have been delighted to receive this powerful vote of reassurance from such an elite group of editorialists. Now we know that we can in all good conscience wish everyone a Merry Christmas without wasting a moment’s concern for the possibility of offending anyone. We can sing Christmas carols at school, throw Christmas parties at the office, and generally share the Good Tidings of the Savior’s birth with all and sundry without hesitation.
(You need a sense of humor in the trenches.)
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.