Interesting. The Religious Right has a new agenda. They are all for the commercializing of Christmas. In fact they are insisting on it! Here’s a link to the whole story
“The American Family Association is leading a boycott of Target for not using the words "Merry Christmas" in its advertising. (Target denies it has an anti-Merry-Christmas policy.)
Bill O'Reilly, the Faux anchor who last year started a "Christmas Under Siege" campaign, has a chart on his Web site of stores that use the phrase "Happy Holidays," along with a poll that asks, "Will you shop at stores that do not say 'Merry Christmas'?..."
…What is less obvious, though, is that Christmas's self-proclaimed defenders are rewriting the holiday's history. They claim that the "traditional" American Christmas is under attack by what John Gibson, another Faux anchor, calls "professional atheists" and "Christian haters." But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it…
…They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681 Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way" a crime.”
After the Civil War, only 18 States recognized it as a holiday. It wasn’t till the early 1900’s that retailers made a connection with Christmas and Shopping. Then it became a no-holds barred competition to re-write history in favor of commercialism. The final score, Commerce 1, Religion 0.
Why some Christians insist on forcing people to celebrate Christmas is beyond me. It is up to us, to wish people a Merry Christmas not for them to wish me a Merry Christmas. Man oh man some people just don't get it. As for Christmas itself, I have always found it kind of amusing that people that are so anti-eucharist theology would celebrate the feast day of the nativity.....puzzling, historical amesia perhaps. Well historical amnesia for sure since you would be hard pressed to find a contemporary christian who knows where the 12 days of Christmas come from. It is sad that it a large part of Christendom there isn't that advent preparation for the great feast that kicks off the time until theopany.
ReplyDeleteBill O'Reilly needs to stick to harrasing women and stay out of theolgy, typical of so many American Catholics, his protestant attitude towards having theology his way (as opposed to adhering to the magisterium of his church) shows how little he knows about his faith.