By Daryl L. Hunter
Growing up as a child in America, as all children, I loved
the Christmas season, the Christmas tree, lights, lawn decorations, candy,
mistletoe, cookies, Santa Claus, elves, reindeer and most of all presents, it
was a magical time of year.It sure was a surprise at age 12 when I found out that Christ was the root word in Christmas, my secular home had never pointed out the connection. Today I remain more secular than anything else and I question myself, why do I get so flipping angry when ACLU types are trying to remove all vestiges of Christmas from the public square when I am not religious.
The answer must be, the homogenization of Christmas is just
another symptom of the dismemberment of traditional American Culture, another
victim of the Culture War, call me old fashioned but I liked the America of
Christmas past, the time of the singular Scrooge. Today Christmas to me is a
lot less about presents and more about turkey, tom and jerrys with friends,
family and tradition, but embarrassingly with only a perfunctory explanation
and observation of the meaning of Christmas to the kids.
When Christmas retailers insult the patrons of their biggest
season by removing the Christmas greeting it makes me want to not buy, when I
was told that a member of the Start Bus Board forbade the drivers from
displaying the Merry Christmas programmed into their electric signs I was
outraged, When Christmas trees became holliday trees I was apoplectic.
I have a hunch that the ACLU and their minions
are offending more than just their sworn enemies, the Christian right. If their
goal is “not to offend” it is a fool’s errand as it is an impossible task
because to accommodate the 15% of Americans who are not Christian you have a
remaining 85% at risk of being offended as an unintended consequence. If their
goal is to offend, they have aspired to a goal they have a gift for achieving.
My hope is my 6 and 9 year olds find the magic in Christmas
that I had the privilege to enjoy as a child; I hope it is still possible in
this increasingly divisive and hostile social climate. As for me and many
others I suppose, I have had a giant intangible stolen from me by the secular
leftists of the ACLU and their Christophobe allies and my Christmas’s will
never be the same.
All the people of the western world are going to have a
Christmas on 12-25 of every year, most will have a day off from work whether
they celebrate Christmas or not. It stands to reason that a Muslim, Jew or
atheist would celebrate an extra day off so merry Christmas to you all.
I originally wrote this in 2006 for my Column "And Rightly So" for a Jackson Hole newspaper "Planet Jackson Hole" but it is a Christmas tradition of mine to repost it every year here on my blog.
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