House of Eratosthenes

John Gibson of Fox News has written a book observing that there is a War on Christmas going on. I don’t have the book and I have not read the book, so I don’t have any opinion on whether or not he has kept his comments factual between the covers. But it strikes me as interesting that his premise has become controversial. Yesterday, I observed with no small amount of amusement, as both sides duked it out on Gibson’s show, Rob Boston from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and Gary McCaleb from the Alliance Defense Fund. Crooks and Liars has a video segment of this incident, and NewsHounds has transcripts.

My own opinion? As is usual in life, the most extreme positions seem to be the ones disproven first. To say, verbatim or paraphrased, that “nobody is trying to get rid of Christmas” is exposed as ridiculous before hardly any research has been done, since it ascribes an individual attribute to an aggregate entity. In other words, the first time I find someone, one person, trying to get rid of Christmas, that statement is popped like a balloon.

To say there is a “war” also strikes me as an exaggeration. One left-leaning guy on a bulletin board made the point that when a commercial enterprise sells Christmas cards and it offers several products that say “Happy Holidays,” it is simply engaging in something that makes good economic sense. Why spend an equivalent amount of design and manufacturing money on a card that says “Merry Christmas,” thus artificially reducing the market for that product to the Christian consumers? It’s bad business.

It’s a fair argument.

On the other hand, I can’t help but notice the point of dispute in the video segment linked above, is whether kids have been prohibited from bringing red and green things to school, or from wearing red and green clothes. This is the logical point upon which the shouting and yelling pivots (I think, anyway; it’s really, really hard to tell). It’s a meaningless distinction. And it is a batshit-crazy rule to lay down, either way. Red forks, green plates. Red socks, green sweaters. What the hell is the problem?

And so to the extent this arouses my interest, which isn’t terribly high, it all boils down to that. “Christmas,” in the purest, strictest sense, commemorates an event that has meaning to a limited set of religions; in that sense, only in the strictest sense, it “excludes” other religions — but it “offends” no one, save for someone with serious emotional problems. And I mean that. I can go around town all day and all night, wearing red and green, yelling “Merry Christmas,” with a big green tree painted on one side of my car and the Baby Jesus painted on the other. Very few people will be offended, and it’s fair to say the people who would be, are the source of any cultural problems taking place.

Think about it. It’s like telling someone “have a nice day” and they’re upset because you shouldn’t be deciding for them what kind of day to have.

Now, there are some out there who aren’t simply arguing that John Gibson is overstating the issue — they’re arguing, further, that there is no cultural resistance taking place against Christmas at all. That, my friends, is a load of crap.

As evidence, I would cite (among many other things) this story out of Lickdale, PA about a substitute teacher recycling that ridiculous old urban legend to children in kindergarten that — get a load of this — there’s no such thing as Santa Claus, and somehow it’s the kids’ parents who are responsible for delivering the presents.

“The poem [The Night Before Christmas] has great literary value, but it goes against my conscience to teach something which I know to be false to children, who are impressionable,” said [substitute teacher Theresa] Farrisi, 43, of Myerstown. “It�s a story. I taught it as a story. There�s no real person called Santa Claus living at the North Pole.”

Farrisi doesn�t believe in Santa Claus, and she doesn�t think anyone else should, either. She made her feelings clear to the classroom full of 6- and 7-year-olds, some of whom went home crying.
:
On Monday night, Jamey [Schaeffer, 6 years old] started to recite Moore�s famous poem while sitting on a couch next to a freshly cut tree, trimmed in tinsel and topped with a golden star: “‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house. No creatures stirred.”

She paused, looked up, and said that�s when the teacher interjected, just a few lines before the verse that announces the arrival of “a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.”

“The teacher stopped reading and told us no one comes down the chimney,” Jamey said, curling into a ball on the couch, bracing her chin on her knees, her voice shrinking away like melting ice cream. “She said our parents buy the presents, not Santa.”

Nobody’s declaring a war on Christmas, huh?

It’s about making the holiday “more inclusive,” huh?

I try not to be prejudiced about such things, but I must say one of the sides in this argument has completely lost me. When teachers sieze control of a child’s personal belief system, and make decisions about that child’s regard for cherished family traditions, that supercede parents wishes and the creative processes of the child — what does this have to do with respecting diverse belief systems? Looks like disrespect, to me.

And it also looks to me as if something is going on. Maybe not a “war”…but certainly a campaign, of sorts. I’m definitely at the point where when someone says “there’s nothing to it,” to me they’re expressing a statement about their own comprehension of the state of affairs, as opposed to reality. They’re just professing their own ignorance.

Update: John Gibson has posted a few comments regarding the big dust-up on the Fox News web site. The nugget within consists of two short paragraphs:

That guy Rob Boston made me furious for calling me a liar about what I said in my book, and then admitting he hadn’t read it.

He also said I said things I haven’t said, and condemned me for it.

Like I said before, it is unusually difficult to tell what’s going on. But to the best I can determine, his description, “said I said things I haven’t said, and condemned me for it” is accurate. If someone else wants to watch the video, and then call me out that I’m wrong, I’m willing to listen to the argument and then do the teapot dance if I’m convinced I’m wrong.

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No War On Christmas, Huh?Friday, December 23rd, 2005

No War On Christmas, Huh?
Friday, December 23rd, 2005