Why This War On Christmas? (Part II)

What is Christmas? Saying it best is Leonard Peikoff:

Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post-Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.

Regardless of how much Christians want it to be, Jesus is the reason for the season only for Christians. Christians would like sole possession over Christmas, and they have tried very hard to take over Christmas fully. There is, however, “the rest of the story,” to paraphrase Paul Harvey. Quoting again from the same article by Leonard Peikoff about the history of Christians and Christmas:

Historically, people have always celebrated the winter solstice as the time when the days begin to lengthen, indicating the earth's return to life. Ancient Romans feasted and reveled during the festival of Saturnalia. Early Christians condemned these Roman celebrations -- they were waiting for the end of the world and had only scorn for earthly pleasures. By the fourth century, the pagans were worshipping the god of the sun on December 25, and the Christians came to a decision: if you can't stop 'em, join 'em. They claimed (contrary to known fact) that the date was Jesus' birthday, and usurped the solstice holiday for their Church.Even after the Christians stole Christmas, they were ambivalent about it. The holiday was inherently a pro-life festival of earthly renewal, but the Christians preached renunciation, sacrifice, and concern for the next world, not this one. As Cotton Mather, an 18th-century clergyman, put it: "Can you in your consciences think that our Holy Savior is honored by mirth? … Shall it be said that at the birth of our Savior . . . we take time . . . to do actions that have much more of hell than of heaven in them?"

Christians should feel free to participate fully in Christmas and to enjoy it fully, joining the rest of us in the celebration of joy, but they should stop trying to claim sole origin and possession of the season. There is plenty of room for all to revel in Christmas in every manner people might choose. That is what America is about. Christmas belongs to all of us, including the Christians.

Sadly, however, religion, particularly Christianity, has given the Christmas trump card to the nihilists who dominate our journalistic and entertainment media, our colleges and universities, and most of our politics. Religion creates a sense of fundamental guilt through its ethics of self-sacrificial service to others and rejection of self, thus plays right into the hands of nihilism. E.g., think about why something like “political correctness” has succeeded so well. Its purveyors sold it as “brother love,” as caring more for others than self, and it caught on. Here is another example: Think about why something like “multiculturalism” has succeeded so well. Its purveyors sold it as putting others before self and never being selfish enough to think that your culture and values could in any way be more important than those of someone else from any other culture with any other values. How could religion protest and fight against core principles as these? The answer is, they could not. Thus, a prepared populace has fallen right into line.

One needed not to have been religious for this anti-ego, self-sacrificial ethics to have succeeded. A German philosopher, Kant, secularized the same ethics in the 18th century, and his version took over Western culture in the two centuries following. This ethics permeates through the Leftist “secular humanists” and the nihilists.

To this day, most people think that selfless service to others is the paragon of ethics. “Why, it has to be; otherwise it would not be so widely accepted everywhere by all as it is now. Right?” Wrong. Popular acceptance is no criterion of correctness.

What horrifies people who subscribe to this ethics is learning that this ethics is indispensable to Nazism, communism, Islam, and all other forms of totalitarianism. Rather than think this horror through, they turn their minds to idle, and that is what the nihilists count on.

“Political correctness” and “multiculturalism” have paralyzed America, and guilt is a major enabler for this paralysis. It makes the victims of this paralysis carry out the destruction of American FOR THE NIHILISTS, while thinking they are “doing good.” The assault on Christmas is a very visible manifestation, but only a tiny portion of the war to destroy American values, American valuers, and America itself.

In the forefront of this assault against America and Americans are activist judges, “making law.” They hide behind extremely “liberal” interpretations of the law which deform the culture through such acts as changing “Christmas trees” into “Holiday trees,” then into no trees at all. They remove any trace they can of traditional and beloved Christmas carols, and throw all vestiges of Christmas into the scrapheap of history by castigating it as “Christian.” That changes these values legally into NEGATIVES, to be removed from any place or thing where any non-Christian citizen can become aware of them--because they supposedly violate the separation of religion and state. That is the enabling “package deal.” You think you are dealing with one thing only to find nasty surprises hidden in the package.

Of course, state and religion must remain legally separated. Freedom requires such separation, but the principle separates the power of the state from forming or enforcing any religion. What gums up understanding (more of the “package deal”) is the prodigious growth of the “public sector.” Thanks to socialists, government now invades most aspects of Americans’ lives. With that invasion comes public funding. Activist judges use the existence of “public funding” as their wedge to over-interpret law to fit their leftist agendas, which are fundamentally nihilistic: the dismantling of America, a piece at a time. This is what groups all sorts of disparate-appearing phenomena into an understandable whole, over the entire culture. Celebrating Christmas does not logically fall under the religion:state separation principle. However, these activist judges and their fellow travelers are trying to stretch their control to more and more aspects of American culture by means of legal precedents.

I stand with anyone who wants to preserve Christmas. As Leonard Peikoff says,

All the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.

This is the real meaning of Christmas, and it is the foundation celebration of capitalism, just as the 4th of July is the celebration of America and freedom. I can stand with any Christians or Jews, or anyone else, rejoicing about Christmas. If they do not try to take my celebration away, I will not try to take theirs away. Quite to the contrary, I will fight to preserve and protect their Christmas as their rights to celebrate however they wish.

The war on Christmas must be understood as a war on values and valuers. The values are life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, property, prosperity, and capitalism, all uniquely American values which many subgroups share in whole or in part, in the free celebration of Christmas. The war on Christmas is really a war on America. Let us not stand for this war, and let us not let the nihilists take Christmas for us, whether religious or not, and, by no means, take America from us.

Merry Christmas—and Happy New Year!