The True Spirit of Xmas : How 4/5 of the country became an oppressed minority
Posted on December 23rd, 2004 by Anthony K. Valley
Julian Sanchez, Reason’s Assistant Editor, publishes his rebuttal concerning the “secularization” of Christmas.
It’s a Christmas tradition as venerable as mistletoe and caroling: As the days grow shorter, conservative activists claiming to speak for American Christendom raise their voices, not for a rousing round of “”Good King Wenceslaus,”” but to complain that the roughly 75 to 80 percent of Americans who profess allegiance to some denomination or another of Christianity constitute a cruelly oppressed minority.
The kvetching is especially loud this year, with a spate of stories chronicling the outrage over a particularly insidious form of anti-Christian bigotry: the Satanic phrase “”happy holidays.”“
National Review’s John Derbyshire reports bristling at these two seemingly innocuous words with the sort of fascinated intensity he normally reserves for buggery. There’s even a Committee to Save Merry Christmas, urging a boycott of stores that spit on Christians by deploying such bigoted phrases as “”happy holidays”” or “”season’s greetings.”” And in case you thought those phrases were, in our increasingly pluralistic society, just nice ways of creating a festive atmosphere without seeming to exclude the folks celebrating…
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So are we really seeing an unprecedented wave of hostility toward either Christmas or Christianity? Or is it, rather, that the waning of the cultural hegemony to which some Christians have come to feel entitled is perceived as an attack? Many of the most loudly trumpeted complaints in this vein are, after all, complaints about the absence of special treatment: no special spot for the Ten Commandments in the courthouse rotunda; no pride of place for Christmas among those happy winter holidays; no exceptions for the Christian charity.
p. [ Full Story @ Reason Online ]
p(small). Source: Reason Online © 2004 Reason Foundation
p(small). Related websites (not necessarily endorsed by In The Faith but REALLY not endorsed by Julian Sanchez):
Committee to Save Merry Christmas />Has Christmas Become Illegal in America?
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