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Christmas under attack

my_wan

Graduate Poster
my_wan
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
1,074
I heard a news segment about Christmas under attack but failed to see where any secular progressives was any part of it. In fact it seemed to be entirely manufactured by Christians unwilling to provide a venue for any other religion, not wanting to include a Menorah in the Fort Collins, CO case.

It appears to me that Christians are being intolerant of other religions and blaming the consequences on secular progressives and the ACLU for personal gain. A google search seems to support this. In fact, as far as I know, there is not one example of a religious icon being removed that couldn't have been avoided by inclusion of other faiths. I'd like to hear the opinions here. I'm glad I never have to worry about Christmas for the adults in my family but the kids are another story.
 
The War on Christmas is silly. However, I am preparing myself for the endless discussion from my fundamentalist Christian relatives over the coming month. (you can pick your friends but not your relatives)

Two thoughts come up. The first is how extreme this issue is among the
Christian fundamentalists. The second is that the cause of this entire issue is the beginning of a real trend in which Christians are having difficulty
forcing thier beliefs on the rest of us. Tolerance is not their strength.


One more thought. Perhaps this should become a real war. The Christians could set up their symbols of faith in a remote part of our county and then
wait for the rest of us to give a damn.
 
 
'Worldnetdaily' represents the fanatic lunatic fringe of Christianity; while that may be quite a few Christians, they are probably not really representative of general Christian opinions. WND does for Christianity what the National Enquirer does for journalism.

The bottom line seems to be that Fort Collins is looking at spending about $38,600 on new decorations and is taking the opportunity to revise their guidelines before they spend the money. All meetings were public, it is noteworthy that almost nobody but the actual task force bothered to attend meetings.

http://citydocs.fcgov.com/?cmd=convert&vid=72&docid=1186703

Despite the usual half truths and outright misinformation of Fox News, the new guidelines are more broad than the old narrower 'completely secular' ones and allow latitude for religious items in personal workspaces and at the museum.

A challenge to religious people of all faiths would be to spend less time fighting with each other this season and spend more time in quiet reflection that two bestsellers this year are books on atheism.
 
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PAC said:
One more thought. Perhaps this should become a real war. The Christians could set up their symbols of faith in a remote part of our county and then wait for the rest of us to give a damn.
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Maybe we could put them all in a small valley somewhere and then blow up the dam
 
We're just getting back at them for their "war on pagan holidays".

They were so successful that we've adopted their methods.
 
Kopji, I would agree that my case is overstated in the sense that not all of any group can be characterized in a certain way. However, finding examples of atheist and/or secular progressives complaining about Christmas displays in general are next to zero compared to the number of incidence blamed on them. The phenomena seems to exist almost entirely in the religious communities.
 
We agree.

I looked through the public minutes in the Ft Collins city on-line site. There was plenty of opportunity for concerns to be brought up and resolved as part of the process. They face national criticism for what, trying to be more diligent in spending taxpayer funds?

I don't really know a better way to look at these kind of things except viewing primary data like the public minutes. The media 'processing' always distorts things, and sometimes distorts so much it is impossible to assert any kind of trend from their reporting.

What I find more interesting is the tactic itself; at least in this case it seems more like an indictment that a few people with strong religious opinions are not capable of working with other people. (The sheriff for example) Their preferred recourse was to wait until the discussions were finished and then yell foul. A contrived persecution.

But is that what is really happening? What was reported is so far removed from what actually was going on, there is not enough of substance to conclude anything. This is probably why I've really come to hate Fox News - they toy with us instead of reporting the news.
 
cloudshipsrule said:
Show me an unbiased news program and I'll show you a flying pig! They all suck, fox included.
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This is fundamentally true about people. Sometimes even as a skeptics these things get missed because it fails to trigger a BS alarm for some reason. Other times it's just a best guess based on insufficient available data.

I'll still watch FOX a fair part of the time because it tries, within the confines of their own biases. They do report on things the other news will avoid due to bias. I'll also call BS when I see it.
 
I recall unbiased Peter Jennings on unbiased ABC World News Tonight a number of years back opening the broadcast about some anti-abortion protestors with the line, "People opposed to a woman's right to choose..."

And I support that right. But I don't pretend both sides aren't biased, consciously or not.
 
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Christianity no longer receives special treatment in the US = Christmas is "under attack".

It makes perfect sense - if you're a moron.
 
My research indicates that the opening shot of the War on Christmas was fired by Irving Berlin when he wrote his sinister, Christ-hating song Happy Holiday performed by Bing Crosby in 1942.
 
Oh, Christmas is under attack. Vachon doesn't make yule logs anymore, but "festive logs" (because they changed their "bûches de Noël" to "bûches des fêtes"). Now that PC stuff is sacrilege! How many other holidays have log shaped cakes (which are completely unrelated to the religious aspects of Xmas anyway)?
 
Jorghnassen said:
Oh, Christmas is under attack. Vachon doesn't make yule logs anymore, but "festive logs" (because they changed their "bûches de Noël" to "bûches des fêtes"). Now that PC stuff is sacrilege! How many other holidays have log shaped cakes (which are completely unrelated to the religious aspects of Xmas anyway)?
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You seem to be making the association that because retailers are trying to be politically correct it must be Christmas under attack. Do you really believe retailers care one way or another, they just want as many sales as possible. They've been feed the idea that many feel that by using certain terminology they are alienating a fairly large segment of the population. Being a business wanting sales this is not a good thing. The irony here is that what examples of anti-Christmas blogs you see are often anti-capitalist. Who is getting notoriety and making money off of the fight for Christmas campaign? Who is making lists of "Friend or Foe" and saying things like;
Americans when it comes to celebrating Christmas this year: You're either with us, or you're against us.
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How silly is that? Who's hiring huge numbers of lawyers to campaign and sue?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/20/MNGVDFRH081.DTL

Who is profiting from this campaign? (Notice the 1st and 5th link is the same)
http://www.lc.org/misc/friend_or_foe.htm

Then there's this;
William Donahue's New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civic Rights launched a fevered, and short-lived, boycott of Wal-Mart when the stores' website recognized the terms Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, yet turned the words Christmas season into holiday season. Wal-Mart apologized for the mishap.
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http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=94
Since when have has "holiday season" not been used? I remember browsing "Holiday Catalog" (actual catalog name) 30 years ago. Perhaps it was really Hanukkah that upset them?

The fact of the matter is that all a government body needs to legally display the nativity scene is to include secular and/or other religious displays. The laws are such that government can't exclusively promote an official religion. They must be inclusive of other beliefs. When they try to avoid the mess they get accused of be anti-religious or anti-Christmas. People call the ACLU anti-religion but how many people that claim this will tell you about this: ACLU of New Jersey Defends Second-Grader's Right to Sing Religious Song? Protecting religious freedom does not mean protecting Christians to the exclusion of all others.

Now show me an organized attempt to remove Christmas. The only organized part I see is some Christians using the fact that they can't have exclusive religious rights to manufacture a battle cry against those evil anti-Christmas/anti-religious people, with a nice profit to boot.
 
my_wan, I think you need to have your sarcasm detector calibrated.

Well, either that or I do.
 
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