Merry C-Word
We like to think we're pretty gutsy on this page. We say what we think, we don't mince words, and darn the consequences. But saying some things apparently takes special courage. There is a campaign going on this holiday season, among lovers of freedom on the right, to defeat the enormously powerful forces that are trying to prevent us from saying Merry
Who are these powerful forces? The liberal media, of course. And then, as William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, explained on MSNBC, there are the "secular Jews" who "control Hollywood" and "hate Christianity." These secular Jews of his imagination are a strange breed. They allow characters like Donohue to make poisonous accusations against them on the very media they control, but will stop at nothing to prevent ordinary Christians from saying "Merry Christmas" (there, we said it!) at the mall.
Despite its official-sounding name, the Catholic League has no connection with the Catholic Church. Donohue is a reliable sound-bite artist for TV bookers who need a Catholic with a hair-trigger sense of grievance. But he is no more a representative of American Catholics than other professional paranoids who go around objecting to "Merry Christmas" are representative of American Jews or Muslims.
The American culture of victimization needs and nurtures people and controversies like this. You're nobody in this country -- the richest and among the freest in the history of the world -- unless somebody is trying to oppress you. "I kvetch, therefore I am."
If the people who run Hollywood hate Christmas, they hate it all the way to the box office. Christmas is huge for Hollywood, this year as always, and there is no lack of pious seasonal sentiments. Watching "Finding John Christmas" ("a heartwarming holiday drama," according to CBS) or the Walt Disney World Christmas Day parade (on ABC, hosted by Regis Philbin) may not be Christmas as Bill O'Reilly celebrates it -- no doubt alone with his Bible when he is not out washing the feet of the poor. But it is Christmas, American style.
O'Reilly has said the alleged secularists want to "cancel Christmas" because they "fear
The crusaders do have a few good stories to tell. For example, how about that town decorating a conifer in front of City Hall, only to call it "the community tree"? Or school districts banning Christmas carols? Or the department store that changes its official greeting to "Happy Holidays." As reported by Eric Boehlert on Salon.com, many of these tales get twisted in the retelling. "You're not allowed to say Merry Christmas in many department stores," declared Tony Snow of Fox News, calling this nonexistent ban "an attack on Christianity."
