It is an accident, in truth, that I am writing this on Christmas.  The ones who really commit to the family and being around others won’t be reading mcgees.org today anyway, right?

Here is Garrison Keillor on Christmas.  It is levied squarely against Universalists who want to — in the example he gives — rewrite Silent Night.

“Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you’re not in the club, then buzz off,” he writes.  Wow.  OK.  “Club”.

But I’m totally with you, dude.  I feel the same skin-crawl when Christian radio in America (for real, they do this) excise the “… and no religion too” line from John Lennon’s Imagine.  (According to Dawkins, sometimes the substitution is made, when others sing it, “… and one religion, too,” but this is so horrifically repulsive that I’m going to have to hear it myself before reporting it as fact.)

But Garrison: cool.  Christian holiday.  That’s what I’ve been saying all along.  Now what you’ve got to understand is, this is a secular nation.  Even when Christmas became a national holiday in 1870, the wording, approved by both houses of congress, didn’t say something like “on the day Our Dear Lord was Born in Bethlehem,” it said “the twenty-fifth day of December, commonly called Christmas Day.”  And it took 100 years for this to happen.

So, Garrison, if you’re going to claim Christmas only for “the club”, then do the thing privately.  Right?  I’m not talking about malls, owned by people.  I’m talking about libraries, courthouses, schools … everywhere my taxpayer dollars go.  Please.  Keep.  Christmas.  But:  Please.  Keep.  Christmas.  To yourselves.  Commit to this, I’m with you.  Don’t commit, then “buzz off”.  It may be your religion more than it is mine, but it’s as much my country as yours, and I won’t tolerate hypocrisy, especially when you write stuff like “And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck.  Did one of our guys write ‘Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’?  No, we didn’t.”

If you’re not committing to this, and just want to lob this stuff from offstage, then as far as I’m concerned, you can go directly to hell without passing “Go ye forth.”

Enjoy your celebrations — all of you — I mean that.  And if you’re offended by my blogging today (I’m having family celebrations starting tomorrow, by the way): maybe consider why you are checking email today? 

Loves!

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:05:25 +0000
Under atheism, religion
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