The Annual War On Christmas Rant

Saw my first bumper sticker of the season: Keep Christ In Christmas is what it read. And I'm bracing myself for an onslaught of shrieks and foam from the right wing about the Annual War On Christmas. I've learned to try and avoid reading such dreck because all it does is just piss me right off.

I remember listening to Bill O'Reilly I think explain that saying Happy Holidays was a sign of being a weak kneed pussy liberal or something and how it was a Communist plot to drive God out of the public square and put us all in Marxist re-education camps to learn to love our new Socialist overlords of something of that nature. (Is it weird that all these rants seem to end up in a socialist gulag somewhere? Or is that just me?)

Anyway, Billo's soliloquy about made my damn head explode. One of the GREATEST things about this country is that walking down the street, I can't tell what religion you may or may not practice. And since Diwali, Hannukah, Kwanza, The Winter Solstice and not to mention Ramadan sometimes fall in the last two months of the year, I'm just going to be OK saying Happy Holidays! Or maybe I'll just baffle you by wishing you a Joyous Kwanza. Happy Holidays to me is a celebration of the ecumenism of the United States- we were founded by people wishing to practice religion how they wanted too after all. I don't take it as some kind of neo-communist, Atheist plot and neither should any of you.

Now, don't get me wrong: when some weak-kneed liberal gets the politically correct vapors and starts banning Christmas trees and Nativities and such things, I roll my eyes. I roll my eyes because it's stupid shit like that that only fuels the Annual War on Christmas fires and because it's pretty damn stupid. They usually light a Menorah down on the Ped Mall for Hannukah and if they wanted to throw up a tree for Christmas I'd be down with that too. Ecumenism should be the order of the day. (I'm going to add a disclaimer to this: if other people that don't practice Christmas but celebrate other Holidays this time of year don't get to play too, that ain't cool. Ecumenism people. The more the merrier!)

If anything, this time of year, we should be calling a truce. Too much of our public discourse has become toxic and we've stopped listening to each other. We've stopped being civilized in our search for compromise on our national problems and with each other. People seem darker, more cynical these days and maybe those are the times we live in. But wouldn't it be great if we could let everyone believe what they want to believe and be kind to each other for a month or so every year? Holidays are stressful enough without lectures on how we shouldn't offend people or how Jesus Christ is in fact the reason for the season. If people find Christmas offensive, well then, I honestly don't know what to say to them and if people want to tell me how I should turn away from the materialistic, capitalistic nature of Christmas today and remember how it's about Jesus my first question is going to be: 'Did you buy your kids presents this year?' The answers should be thought-provoking at the very least.

In the meantime everyone, it's Christmas. Or Hannukah. Or a damn cold month at the end of the year when you get together with family. Whatever the reason, it's not the time to be wasting printer ink or air time attacking what should be a nice, peaceful, relaxing month as we end our year.

Of course all of this could be a moot point if the Mayans are correct. If they are does that mean the War on Christmas ends in a tie?

UPDATED: See, I'm not the only one...