- "I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time,
when it has come round-apart from the veneration due to its sacred name
and origin, if anything can be apart from that-as a good time: a kind,
forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long
calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their
shut up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really
were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures
bound on other journeys."
-
- These words of Scrooge's nephew describe Christmas in
the America of my youth. Christmas was a special and wonderful time of
year, marked by kindness and good cheer, with its myriad celebrations all
viewed as ultimately stemming from the birth of the One who, in Dickens'
words, "made lame beggars walk and blind men see."
-
- Today's consensus is different. In last year's made-for-cable
movie "Christmas Rush," one character wishes another "Merry
Christmas," only to be told, "Gee, that is politically incorrect."
And so it is. In one generation-I was born in 1964-Christmas has gone from
being a widespread and joyous public celebration to the holiday that dare
not speak its name. We now have "holiday trees," "holiday
cards," "holiday parties," "holiday songs," and
even, in one particularly egregious advertisement, a "child's first
holiday." Simply put, there is now raging a "War Against Christmas,"
in author Peter Brimelow's trenchant phrase.
-
- A hallmark of this war is an aggressive multiculturalism
that has elevated a variety of formerly obscure or even non-existent festivals
into faux-Christmases, principally Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and now Ramadan,
but also Diwali, Bodhi Day, the Birth of Guru Gobind Singh, Dongji, and
Chinese New Year. The reason for the elevation of these holidays is their
proximity to Christmas, not their cultural significance or intrinsic worth.
Indeed, Kwanzaa was invented in 1966, Hanukkah is traditionally a minor
holiday (with no basis in the canonical Hebrew Bible), and Ramadan was
virtually unknown in America until a few short years ago. Despite their
recent provenance-at least as pseudo-Christmases-these holidays are now
treated as coequals of Christmas, with public figures sure to pepper any
of the increasingly rare mentions of Christmas with references to at least
some of these others.
-
- The desire to efface Christmas that lies behind the elevation
of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and all the rest is illustrated by recent developments
in the New York City public schools. The Thomas More Law Center is now
suing the school system, which bans Nativity scenes but regularly display
menorahs and Muslim crescents. Nor are the schools trying to rectify this
now that their hostility to Christianity has been put in the spotlight.
Instead, they are vigorously defending the ban, claiming that the "suggestion
that a crèche is a historically accurate representation of an event
with secular significance is wholly disingenuous." The birth of the
most important figure in history carries no weight in New York City, nor
does the fact that the birth was first depicted in a crèche by another
seminal historical figure, an itinerant friar from Assisi named Francis.
It does not take a belief in the divinity of Christ or the sanctity of
Francis to recognize their tremendous impact on the history and culture
of the West. Apparently, though, the multiculturalists are eager to promote
every culture but our own.
-
- That the war against Christmas is part of a broader war
against Western culture is shown by last year's winner of VDARE.com's invaluable
War Against Christmas competition. The Columbus, Ohio, schools banned a
performance of Handel's Messiah, which for the previous nine years had
been the highlight of the year at a specialized school for the arts. The
performance would have violated the district's religious-music policy,
which came into being as the result of an ACLU lawsuit. According to the
Columbus Dispatch, the policy stipulated that the proportion of religious
music performed in concert be no more than 30 percent and that the performance
of religious music be "based on sound curricular reasons" and
not "manifest a preference for religion or particular religious beliefs."
The educational bureaucrats who devised the policy, trying to be helpful,
suggested the students perform "Frosty the Snowman" or "Jingle
Bells" instead of Handel. Their ignorance and philistinism is appalling,
though characteristic of those waging the War Against Christmas. After
hearing Messiah performed in London, Haydn was moved to exclaim, "Handel
is the master of us all!" and to write his own great oratorio, The
Creation. But, in today's climate of "sensitivity" and "tolerance,"
beauty and artistic merit are scarcely a sufficient warrant for exposing
delicate ears to the name of Christ.
-
- The transformation of Christmas to "holiday"
and the attendant impoverishment of our culture was brought about to accommodate
not the small minority of Americans who do not celebrate Christmas but
the far smaller minority-comprising those of all faiths and of none-who
resent the overwhelming majority who do celebrate Christmas. In my experience,
most non-Christians do not resent Christmas and generally enjoy some aspects
of its celebration. This sentiment was well expressed by Philadelphia Inquirer
editor Jane Eisner's thoughtful and generous essay of December 2002, in
which she explained why, as a Jew, she was bothered by the suppression
of Christmas and "[t]he conflation of Christmas, Hanukkah, and now
Kwanzaa into one big, fat indistinguishable holiday."
-
- But the transformation of Christmas into "holiday"
would not have occurred without a dedicated, active minority who resented
and despised it. An upcoming film on the art-house circuit, called "The
Hebrew Hammer," a spoof of blaxploitation films, features the film's
eponymous hero and his sidekick, the head of the Kwanzaa Liberation Front,
battling the film's villains, the sons of Santa Claus and Tiny Tim. Among
the villains' acts of treachery: distributing videos of "It's A Wonderful
Life," one of the greatest of all American movies and the favorite
picture of both Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart. Judging from the film's
Web site, it appears that "The Hebrew Hammer" at least has the
potential to be funny. But the reasons for its making are not. As the film's
director, Jonathan Kesselman, told the LA Jewish Journal, "I asked
myself, 'What as a Jew really pisses me off?' It hit me when I was walking
around a mall in December: I hate Christmastime."
-
- This Christmas, though, you won't have to go to an art
house to see a film inspired by disdain for Christmas. Disney is observing
the holiday by releasing (through its Miramax subsidiary) another alleged
comedy, "Bad Santa." This movie's Santa figure is shown being
a drunk and having sex, is heard by other characters having anal sex, and
repeatedly swears in front of children. According to the Chicago Tribune's
John Kass, Disney is promoting this charming film with advertisements on
TV featuring "a veiled reference to oral sex and an unmistakable reference
to feminine hygiene" at times-such as during Sunday afternoon football
games-when it would be reasonable to expect children to watch them. As
Kass archly observes, "About the only thing that Santa is forbidden
to do these days is mention the real reason that gifts are given in late
December."
-
- The whole point of "Bad Santa" is to mock and
demean Christmas. The film's boosters say as much. George Thomas, of the
Akron Beacon Journal, wrote in early November, "The trailer shows
this as an anti-holiday film and it could be the much needed antidote to
that good-will-to-man feeling that permeates the season." It goes
without saying that the great Walt Disney would never have made such a
film, but neither would any of the other major studios in Hollywood's golden
age. They were busy instead making such delightful films as "It's
a Wonderful Life," "The Bells of St. Mary's" (the film playing
in Bedford Falls as George Bailey runs down its snowy streets on Christmas
Eve), "The Bishop's Wife," and "Miracle on 34th Street."
The journey from "Miracle on 34th Street" to "Bad Santa"
is downhill all the way.
-
- Kesselman has the same right to "hate Christmastime"
as the rest of us do to love it, but it makes no sense to transform our
culture and jettison beloved and popular traditions to appease such hatred.
The malcontents and misfits who have litigated and complained to prevent
such horrors as children learning how to sing "Silent Night"
should not be allowed to set our course. What is needed, instead, is true
tolerance, a recognition that the point of celebrating a holiday is just
that-celebration-and the intent of those doing the celebrating is not to
demean those who don't. As Jane Eisner wrote, "Somehow we have to
learn to coexist without calling in lawyers and initiating merger talks.
We have to recognize the strength and distinctiveness of each celebration,
and not force equality by pretending 'I Had a Little Dreidel' is on par
with the heavenly melodies of Christmas carols."
-
- I first began thinking about this while driving to my
parents' in Michigan several years ago to celebrate Christmas. Even though
I was driving on Dec. 23, I could not find Christmas music on any American
radio station. Then I came across CBC 2, which was carrying nothing but
Christmas music and whose announcers were regularly wishing their listeners
a Merry Christmas. Their programming featured both familiar Christmas music
and some gems in the seemingly inexhaustible treasury of beautiful Christmas
music I had not heard before: Anne Sofie von Otter singing lovely Swedish
carols, Charpentier's beautiful Mass for Midnight, with its generous borrowing
from French carols, and Praetorius's stunning Mass for Christmas Morning.
The sheer beauty of the music brought home what we are in danger of losing.
And that the proudly tolerant Canadians were playing such music led me
to wonder why we are, instead, sanitizing our culture of any reference
to Christmas.
-
- Rather than strip the altars, we used to try to add to
all the beauty surrounding Christmas, the work done earlier by Giotto,
Bach, Dickens, Charpentier, Praetorius, and the village priest and organist
who collaborated to give us "Silent Night." Although not quite
on this level, Hollywood's classic Christmas films have stood the test
of time and are still being watched and enjoyed nearly 60 years after they
were made. More recently, carols such as "The Little Drummer Boy"
and cartoons such as "A Charlie Brown Christmas" have enchanted
us, and they still do, nearly 40 years later. We no longer make such contributions,
as the focus of the Christmas season is no longer the positive one of celebrating
a shared tradition but the negative one of pretending that tradition does
not exist, so as not to offend those who do not share it.
-
- The result of sanitizing Christmas is now within sight:
an undistinguished, uninspiring public celebration, devoid of religious
or cultural significance or indeed of beauty, with nothing left but multiculturalist
pap and tawdry commercialism. I do not believe that grim fate is inevitable.
But that future will indeed be ours if we remain so unnerved by the thought
of giving offense to those looking for a reason to be offended that we
are afraid to celebrate our own culture, tradition, and religion.
-
-
-
- Tom Piatak writes from Cleveland, Ohio.
- http://www.amconmag.com/12_15_03/article2.html
|
