Bah Humbug

A friend of mine started this Committee to Save Merry Christmas and it’s getting a lot of press. At first glance, you may think it’s funny (or even silly) there’s a committee to boycott Macy’s because they say “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea. I am sick and tired of the assault on people of faith. And I think the refusal to acknowledge Christmas (celebrated by 96% of Americans, by the way) is just another indication of the move toward secularization and the religious intolerance in our society today.

Kevin and I have been talking about this a lot lately. Besides the refusal of retailers to brightly greet their customers with a cheery “Merry Christmas,” the public display of a “Christmas tree” is practically nonexistent. They aren’t called “Christmas trees” anymore, you see. They’re called “Holiday trees.” Not only is this offensive, it’s also really dumb and illogical. I ask . . . Is there such a thing as a Hanukah tree? Or a Kwanzaa tree? Or (now that we all know what Eid is) an Eid tree? Um . . . no.

I was listening to the Medved show yesterday (Medved is Jewish, by the way) and he was saying that, although Jews don’t celebrate Christmas, they nonetheless enjoy and appreciate the Christmas season. Take Irving Berlin, for instance. He was a Jew from Poland who wrote the song “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” The point I think Medved was trying to make is that only the hypersensitive few would be offended at a “Merry Christmas” greeting . . . or a “Christmas Tree.” So, why are we bending over backwards to cater to this hypersensitivity?

[Kevin told me yesterday about an interview he heard with a rabbi the other day where the rabbi specifically stated that Hanukah is the only Jewish feast NOT mentioned in the Torah. It’s, actually, a rather insignificant holiday compared to other Jewish feasts and celebrations. The reason it’s become such a big holiday in the Jewish community is so that there is an alternative to Christmas! And this was from the mouth of the rabbi himself.]

And then there’s the incidence of the third grade children in San Francisco who were kicked out of Union Square for singing traditional Christmas songs that referenced outrageous and horrible things like “mangers” and “angels.” (Can you imagine the gall of these kids?!) And there there’s the lawsuit in New Jersey to prohibit airing traditional instrumental Christmas music because, even though words aren’t being played, people might hear the tunes and think about the words in their heads. And this is religious proselytizing? C’mon!

Last night I went to a live taping of the Hannity and Colmes show in Cupertino. My constitutional law professor, Jordan Lorence, spoke in the first segment. (He represents the fifth grade teacher in Cupertino who was banned from using the Declaration of Independence in his classroom because it references “God” and the “Creator.”) Afterwards, at a reception, Jordan shared why he thinks people are finally getting outraged – liberalism has gone too far. Things like Christmas, the Declaration of Independence, and Marriage are examples of things that unite Americans. The assault on these elementary components of our lives is too much for us. We are tired of being attacked. We are tired of secularism encroaching upon us and strangling us.

The diversity rhetoric has gone too far. The more we focus on how different (diverse) we are in America, the less we have to bond us together. (I think diversity will destroy America if we continue to embrace our differences more than our commonality.) It’s time to stop focusing on how different we are and start focusing more on what makes us – each and every one of us – “Americans.”