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The following article was adapted from a segment of the Blast the Right podcast. http://www.therationalradical.com/podcast.html Jack Clark is a retired attorney now working full-time to advance progressive causes.

Bill O'Reilly's War Against Christmas

by Jack Clark


I don’t know how many of you are familiar with John Gibson. He’s one of the on-air personalities at Fox News. He’s the one that looks like Beavis or Butthead. I’m actually not sure which one is which so I can’t tell you which one I think he looks like. He actually may look like a cross between the two. In any case, did you know that he’s written a book worthy of that lovely cartoon duo? Gibson’s book is entitled The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.

No, I’m not kidding you. John Gibson and Bill O’Reilly have become the head cheerleaders in this latest right-wing propaganda-of-distraction effort.

I’m going to analyze some excerpts from a Bill O’Reilly talking points memo. That’s the little spiel he opens his program with. If you are anyplace where laughter would be inappropriate, get ready to stifle your laughter, because you will laugh.

O’Reilly starts off by boasting, “Some big wins for Christmas.” What? Did peace on Earth break out? Was world hunger ended? Did any of Jesus’ other teachings achieve full fruition?

Then a little later he says, “The anti-Christmas forces are retreating.” I ask you, who are the anti-Christmas forces, the anti-Christian forces. Aren't they the greedy people? The warmongers? The haters? Yes. That’s Bill O’Reilly and the rest of his right-wing cohorts, but they don’t realize it.

To them, however, anti-Christian forces are those who say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

O’Reilly then goes on to talk about the "pro-Christmas" movement. The pro-Christmas movement? You may be part of a self-fashioned pro-Christmas movement, Bill, but in reality, you’re one of the head cheerleaders for the anti-teachings of Jesus assault on the world.

Bill ends his little talk by reminding his audience that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Liberty? Eternal vigilance? How over the top can O’Reilly get? Apparently, into the stratosphere.

O’Reilly, Gibson, and the rest of them are supposedly all upset because some people are calling a Christmas tree a holiday tree, some stores aren’t mentioning the word Christmas in their advertising, and some people are saying, “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

So apparently, the essence of Christmas is, one, making sure a Christmas tree is called a Christmas tree instead of a holiday tree; two, saying Merry Christmas to people as opposed to Happy Holidays; and three, ensuring that advertisements use the word “Christmas.” These are the things worth fighting for in connection with the Christmas holiday, according to Bill O’Reilly, John Gibson, and these others.

Isn’t it interesting that if people protest about, for example, racial prejudice or economic injustice, they’re labeled by the right as whiners and complainers, but a store not mentioning Christmas in its advertising, now that’s worthy of a protest!

Wouldn’t it be fair to say that never on behalf of so large and all-powerful a majority has such a frivolous complaint been raised? I think it would definitely be fair to say that.

Now, just for the record, as with virtually everything right-wingers do, even the surface level of this propaganda campaign is composed of a pack of lies. In a recent editorial in The New York Times, Adam Cohen pointed out two salient facts:

First, the present way Christmas is celebrated isn’t the traditional way, stretching back to the founding of the country. No, the current commercialized way Christmas is celebrated only started around the 1920s.

Second, the entire movement to use more inclusive nomenclature stretches back decades. It’s not a new phenomenon, a new "liberal plot," as Gibson calls it. When I was in high school over thirty years ago, they changed the name from "Christmas break" to "winter break."

The facts, of course, are irrelevant to Gibson, O’Reilly, and their cohorts. They don’t really care about this issue. This is just part of their campaign of distraction—another of their wedge issues. Obviously, every second that they spend screaming about it, that I spend replying to them, and that you spend talking about it, it’s a second we're not going to talk about --because the second is gone – important issues like social justice, like economic justice, like the war in Iraq, like a million other things that desperately need our attention.

Doesn’t Christmas celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ? Are O’Reilly and Gibson really telling us that Jesus would be more concerned about some superficial acknowledgment of a holiday celebrating his birth, than he would be with our implementing his teachings?

Did Jesus come to Earth to have his birthday celebrated or to teach mankind something and expect mankind to follow what he said?

If Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus and Jesus came here to teach us and to lead us into better behavior towards our fellow men and women, then wouldn’t the way to acknowledge his birthday and to celebrate it, be to implement his teachings?

If a right-winger brings up this issue, I would just ask him or her, “If you’re so concerned about celebrating Christmas and acknowledging it, why don’t we acknowledge it and celebrate it in a meaningful manner? How about we all agree, those of us who already have more than enough, no gift-giving? We’ll give all our gifts to those who have nothing.

"How about we’ll celebrate Christmas by pressuring our representatives in Congress to increase the minimum wage? To fully fund the AIDS program that Bush is so severely underfunding? To fully fund the No Child Left Behind program?"

This whole "attack on Christmas" propaganda campaign would be funny if it weren't so tragic. Every year under George W. Bush, poverty has gone up. Under his tenure, the number of Americans without health care insurance has gone up. Hunger has gone up. All this is from the government’s own statistics.

Now what is Jesus’ prime teaching to us about how we’re supposed to interact with our fellow human beings? It’s that we have to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, minister to the sick, be kind to the stranger. That’s what Jesus wants us to do. So how better to celebrate the birth of Jesus than to do these things?

After all, Jesus said how you treat the least of these is how you treat Him. On his birthday, shouldn’t we strive to treat Him -- in the guise of the poor, the "least of these" -- especially kindly?

How much more so is this appropriate to right-wing Christians who spend all year doing the opposite, trying to make sure that our society does not use its collective resources – the power of government -- to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, minister to the sick, greet the stranger?

And now, at the very time of the year when they should most be doing these things, right-wingers raise another one of their phony wedge issues.

“Oh, we have to call a Christmas tree a Christmas tree, not a holiday tree. Stores must put Christmas in their advertising. Don’t tell anyone “Happy Holidays,” tell them “Merry Christmas.”

That’s what right-wingers would have you believe that Christmas is all about -- that Jesus is all about. What a perversion of the holiday, what a perversion of the teachings of Jesus, what a dishonoring of Jesus Christ!

The anti-Christmas forces that Bill O’Reilly, John Gibson, and the others are ranting and raving about are no one other than themselves. They’re waging the war on Christmas. They’re waging the war on Jesus.