Have a Holly, Jolly Holiday

Such is the title of an article by Neely Tucker in today's Washington Post, which takes a really good and — yes — balanced look at the claims of those who are fighting the "War on Christmas". It's a good piece, and you should read the whole thing as they say, but this quote from Tucker Carlson during an interview on his show perfectly illustrates the silliness of this season:

"It is kind of heartening, I think, for Christians to see this, all this outrage, all this fear at Christmastime, you know, Christmas tree, Christmas carol, 'Silent Night'— oh, that's a, you know, that's a subversive song — because it means that Christianity isn't dead. It still has the capacity to scare people. It still gives people the creeps."

I'd like to make some kind of joke about how much Tucker obviously gets that whole spirit of Christmas thing, but the sad fact is that many people watching were probably nodding their heads in agreement as he went off on his fearsome Christmas rant. (OK, maybe not "many" people in some absolute sense — I don't think that "The Situation" has that big of an audience).

But if Tucker misses what the spirit of Christmas should be, he does get what it's becoming — a mixture of anger, resentment, and the need of the majority to ever-more dominate the discourse of the minority (variously defined as needed). It's Christmas, O.G.-style: "Say my name, bitch!"

In the end, maybe the secular celebrants have a better sense of how to celebrate the modern holiday — you show your superiority by how much stuff you can buy, not by how many people you can annoy with your rude and uninformed blather about the war on your mythologized version of Christmas. The former sure sounds like more fun to me. Happy Holidays!