The “war on Christmas” is Orwellian in character. It never ends, and is manufactured not by the purported enemy but by conservative cultural Christians, as a means of giving people an ideological focus that makes them prone to manipulation. Presumably you have seen the latest version, complaining about plain red cups at Starbucks?
John Pavlovitz offered this insight in a post that is worth reading in its entirety:
In truth, the War on Christmas cries are really a gift we Christians give ourselves.
These manufactured seasonal offenses offer a convenient distraction for we who have become complacent and comfortable in our affluent, cozy religion. They generate the kind of cheap urgency we need to take a yearly self-righteous stand, filling us with the easy high of temporary religious outrage. After a brief crusade against the tyranny of some imaginary heathen horde, we can then return to the regularly scheduled yuletide fray with an inflated sense of moral fortitude, confident that we have defended the faith.
In reality we’ve just made a brief moral pit stop on the way to the mall.
If you really want to fight back against Starbucks, Ken Schenck has pointed out that the pen is mightier than the sword. And of course, as even the person who started the whole thing will tell you, you can tell the cashier that your name is “Merry Christmas” and then they won’t merely write it on your cup, but will also call it out. And so why is there a need for outrage again?
Zack Hunt argues that it is Christians who are engaged in a war on Christmas. Ben Irwin offers a Biblical guide to how to survive the war on Christmas. See too the posts by Libby Anne, Erin Wathen, Morgan Guyton, Brandan Robertson, Clifford Stumme, Petula Dvorak, and Jared Byas (the latter of whom suggests that Christians ought to be trying to lose the culture war).
Also susceptible to interpretation as an attack on Christmas is Ian Paul’s reminder that Jesus (even taking the early chapters of the Gospel of Luke as a factual account) was not born in a stable.
And finally, some acknowledgments, courtesy of PHD Comics.
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