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 The
Unholiday
Remember
the ad for the “uncola” soft drink? Here’s to making
the unholiday as unmemorable...
[by Jan
LaRue] 10/23/05
Merchants
trying to make Christmas a generic, cash-cow holiday are
losing money. The “Return Christ to Christmas” backlash
against the unholiday peddlers has driven some to retail
repentance.
Some holdouts
are still running ads promising, “Order by Friday for
holiday delivery.” If it weren’t for getting
trapped in corporate voice-jail, I’d be tempted to
call and ask, “Which holiday would that be, the 4th
of July, Labor Day? I’m clueless. I need it for the
one when you guys have all the tinsel, trees, red and green
ribbons, stars, wreathes, poinsettias, the fat guy in the
red suit? Help me out here. What do we call that?”
Then there
are the unjolly faces filling public media places telling
us we have to keep Christmas out of public places. Don’t
you know, they ask with patronizing condescension, you’re
free to celebrate Christmas all you want in your homes and
churches? Can’t you just be satisfied with that?
I wonder
if they confine their birthday parties to their homes or “force” it
on the rest of us with celebrations in restaurants capped
off by a dozen waiters and waitresses singing off-key, hand-clapping
choruses of “Happy Birthday” to them instead
of everybody else.
One would
hope that instead of pushing the rest of us to evict Jesus
from His birthday party, they’d busy themselves investigating
why it is that for two millennia, hundreds of millions of
people of all ages, races, classes and nations have worshipped,
lived and died for the Christ of Christmas.
We’re
supposed to hide out until things get worse before we speak
up. And by the way, how long will it be until the unholiday
forces are trying to outlaw our decorated homes and lawn
crèches because they might offend our non-Christian
neighbors? These displays are publicly visible so “they’re
not really private,” will be the complaint. If you
think that’s exaggerated, try this:
The sign
at a privately owned McDonald’s on the corner of Falls
of Neuse and Spring Forest Road in Raleigh, North Carolina,
reads: “Merry Christmas, Jesus is the Reason for the
Season.” According to WRAL-TV, December 14, “It
is a holiday message that Amanda Alpert thinks comes on a
little too strongly. ‘It offends me because it specifically
talks about Jesus, Merry Christmas. It doesn’t give
credit to anyone else,” Alpert said. Alpert says she’s
offended as a Jew.
Thankfully,
there are other Jews of good will who are standing with Christians
to keep our sacred day alive and well in the public square.
Syndicated columnist Don Feder has formed an organization, “Jews
Against Anti-Christian Defamation” (JAACD), for that
purpose.
Don’s
advisory board includes Mona Charen, syndicated columnist;
Natalie B. Choate, attorney; Rabbi David Dalin, professor,
University of Toronto; Barry Farber, columnist and talk-show
host; Raoul Felder, author; Beth Galinsky, Jewish Action
Alliance; Rabbi Joshua Haberman, Foundation for Jewish Studies;
Bruce Herschensohn, professor, Pepperdine University; David
Horowitz, Center for the Study of Popular Culture; Michael
Horowitz, Hudson Institute; Jeff Jacoby, columnist, The Boston
Globe; Binyamin Jokolvsky, Jewish World Review; Jeff Katz,
attorney; Morton Klein, Zionist Organization of America;
Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Toward Tradition; Barbara Ledeen, Jewish
Republican activist; Rabbi Yehuda Levin, Jews for Morality;
Herb London, Hudson Institute; Jackie Mason, entertainer;
Michael Medved, syndicated talk-show host; Rabbi Jacob Neusner,
professor, Bard College; Judith Reisman, author; Rabbi Aryeh
Spero, Caucus for America, and Herb Zeibon, Americans for
a Safe Israel.
To them
we say thank you, God bless you and Happy Hanukkah and Merry
Christmas! You can visit their Web site at www.Jews4fairness.org.
Then there’s
the taxpayer-funded Ridgeway Elementary School in Dodgeville,
Wisconsin, where school administrators saw the Christmas
light after feeling the heat from calls and e-mails protesting
a ban on Silent Night. School district officials announced
December 14 that they had withdrawn their substitution of “Cold
in the Night,” sung to the tune of Silent Night, in
the school’s “winter program.” There was
already room in the school inn for Santa Claus, Kwanza, Menorahs,
and La Befana, a Christmas witch, but not Jesus. Thanks to
folks who inundated school officials with protests, the district
administrator confirmed that Silent Night will be sung once
again.
Think about
it. They took the melody of a classic carol about the birth
of Christ that promises hope, light, peace and salvation
and substituted a dreary lyric that cries for all that is
promised in the words they rejected. And these are educators.
But the
tarnished star atop the unholiday’s bramble bush has
to be the self-anointed cardinal of Congress, Sen. Ted Kennedy
(D-Massachusetts). Kennedy reached a new low on the floor
of the Senate Monday where, in his relentless pursuit of
political advantage, he expounded the gospel according to
Ted:
"Rather
than debate whether the word 'Christmas' should appear
in our stores and on our greeting cards, shouldn’t
we be living out the hope that came from the first Christmas
and do more for our fellow citizens than greater tax breaks
for the rich and greater hardship for the poor and everyone
else?"
There you
have it. Mary and Joseph’s real mission in Bethlehem
was to protest Herod’s wealth and the lack of affordable
housing for the poor. Why else would a woman several months
pregnant take a back-numbing donkey ride of 60-80 miles?
The real hope of Christmas isn’t Jesus saving us from
our sins—it’s politicians saving us from the
rich.
The unholiday
is what’s left when Christ is removed from Christmas—beautifully
wrapped gifts but empty of all that Jesus came to give: joy,
hope, love, salvation—good news for all people. If
you think it’s worth having—it’s worth
keeping—and it’s worth debating.
“Now
when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying
which was told them concerning this Child” (Luke 2:17,
NKJV). Let’s go and do likewise.
Merry Christmas!
-one-
copyright
2005 Concerned Women of America
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