I wasn’t sure just how to frame this piece, and believe it or not, sometimes I am concerned about who I might or might not offend. I’m pretty sure that I’ve lost at least one Kibbitz Corner follower because he simply couldn’t tolerate my periodic colorful expletives, which are not fucking deleted. I shake my head and grind my teeth every time I see f!*& or s@#% in some article, essay, or correspondence. If you have the temerity to think it, you might as well have the courage to say it out loud or type it with all the filthy letters intact. So you know where I set the bar: My journalistic integrity (in honor of my hero, Hunter S. Thompson) won’t permit me to cease usage of the “universal adjective” anytime soon. Likewise, back when I was still ranting on Left, Right, and Centered on a daily basis, I had one reader in particular, a very intelligent guy who often wrote incisive comments, who sent me one of those “I’m canceling my subscription to your newspaper/magazine because…” letters. He refused to tolerate my persistent rude and unwavering criticism of Christianity any longer.
Guilty as charged, your honor. I’m no fan of any organized religion, and if I had to name the two most intrusive and obnoxious ones, in my humble opinion, they would be Islam and Christianity. One of them preaches that if you don’t believe as we do, we’re justified in killing you, and the other one threatens that if you don’t believe as we do, you’ll suffer a gazillion years of a fate worse than death. Not fun people. But I don’t let my own heritage, Judaism, off the hook either. We are, after all, the learned theologians who came up with the death penalty for things like planting different seeds in the same field, cutting your hair at the sides, or having sex with a woman during her period, along with 73 other capital offenses.
I guess that if I had to name one organized religion that I’m at least neutral about, if not mildly supportive of, it would be Buddhism. It’s hard to argue with a philosophy which basically states that doing nice things for other people not only improves your karma, but makes you feel better, right here in this world without any promises or threats of postmortem rewards or consequences. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and while you’re at it, do unto yourself as you would have others do unto you. On the other hand, you have the surprising oxymoron of the “angry Buddhist mob”, like the ones who commited acts of violence against Muslim villages in Burma and Sri Lanka. So even some Buddhists suffer from the “my god is bigger than your god” delusion, which is the core problem anytime you start looking at your belief system as a competitive team with it’s own uniforms and anthems and winners and losers.
So that’s me. That’s the way I think. Which means that if there was anyone fighting a “war on Christmas”, it would be me. And maybe I even did, when I was younger and not quite as evolved and enlightened. When someone would greet me or bid me adieu with “Merry Christmas!”, likely as not, I’d counter with a “Happy holidays!” I think it somehow made me feel as if I was scoring a few points for the vastly overmastered progressive/humanist/secularist team. But listen, Christmas warriors: I’ve surrendered! Note to Bill O’Reilly: You can stop the weekly Thanksgiving to New Year rants. The war is over. You won.
So if “Merry Christmas” makes someone happy, that’s a good thing. I routinely say it to friends, acquaintances, retail clerks, and anyone else who says it to me. Quite frequently I’ll even initiate the conversation with a “Merry Christmas”, for those for whom the greeting applies. It’s that Buddhist philosophy again. If hearing a couple of words can actually incrementally improve someone’s day, it improves mine just as much to utter them.
I’m sure the Hasselbeck/Limbaugh/Beck crowd will still hold aloft the damning instances of the ACLU or some other group bringing suit to evict nativity scenes from one courthouse lawn or another, but I would argue that it’s just more evidence that the war is over and that you won…courthouse lawns are about the only place where you aren’t confronted with the baby Jesus and a bunch of barnyard animals, usually accompanied by a CD playing one of the roughly ten thousand versions of “Silent Night” by everyone from Bing Crosby to Carrie Underwood.
So enough already with the “war on Christmas”. Get a grip, take a breath, and have a very Merry Christmas.
(And a happy new year.)
BW
Kibbitz Corner 