Sunday, December 25, 2005

My neighbors in Medway, Massachusetts made headlines this week for banning Christmas from their public schools. School administrators designated a "magical tree" and ordered a sixth-grade class to replace red and green elf hats with white to avoid using Christmas colors. The middle school principal sent a letter to parents announcing that selections from Jesus Christ Superstar would be removed from a musical in January. Last Friday, a concert program was edited to remove the song, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." That same concert included a performance of "O Hanukkah."

It's been described as political correctness run amok. It's been described as a war on Christmas. It's neither. It's a war on Christianity.

If I objected to an elementary school displaying a menorah and singing "O Hanukkah," I would be condemned as an anti-Semite. If I questioned the validity of Kwanzaa, I would be called a racist. But society contorts itself to avoid confronting anyone with Christian imagery; it embraces Jewish and Muslim traditions to demonstrate its tolerance, and it viciously expels any echo of Christianity to prove its integrity.

They're not saying, "Government must not endorse religion." They're saying, "Government cannot acknowledge Christianity." This is more than a double standard. It's blatant, unapologetic bigotry.

The popular lampoon this year has been "intelligent design" -- the notion that human beings constitute such complex structures, they must have been architected. But proponents of intelligent design are being cast as dolts less for their beliefs than for one they reject: the notion of evolution as settled law. The irony is that like global warming, this discussion is avoided by serious scientists because the truth is that we don't know. Evolution is a theory; we have evidence, but we also have holes. We don't yet understand how life works, and we can't yet trace its origin.

I don't believe Adam was fashioned from mud, and I don't believe a wife sprang from his rib. I don't believe in fairy tales. But I also understand the scientific method, and I've read enough history to know that the world is flat until one day, it's not. No rational scientist would be caught promenading evolutionism as anything more than a work in progress, yet these fools recite Darwin like it's Gospel. Congratulations, halfwits: You've failed to learn the lesson of Galileo.

Atheism has become an active sport. It's not enough for these people to reject the idea of God; they've become evangelists, eager for an opportunity to embarrass people of faith. They behave as middle school girls: They flaunt their disbelief like fashion and they mock anyone who doesn't conform. They've made the term atheism synonymous with immaturity.

But if you've followed the news this past month, you know their crusade has become farce and the tide has begun to turn. Wal-Mart and other retail giants have deliberately leaned on the word "Christmas" this year, and stories like the Medway fiasco have been reported with a decidedly sardonic tone. People are fed up. We're a country born from retaliation against a bully, after all; and the mean girls might consider that before coming back from holiday break. Schoolyard rules: If you keep shooting off your mouth, eventually someone's going to knock out your teeth.

2 Comments:

At December 25, 2005 11:21 PM, Blogger Coloratura said...

You can count me among the fed up... I ran across the term 'Chrismakkuh' this year and while I first thought it was a joke, apparently some people are practising this as a 'holiday' event. WTF? Thanks for posting this, your comments are right on. I'm not a right-winger, but I have so had it up to here with PC crap.

 
At January 02, 2006 12:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I thought this deserved a proper response, so I've provided it here: Holiday Wars

By the way, this is a great blog, and I'm adding a link to it from my site. Keep writing!

 

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