Comforting Sentiments

‘Twas 11 days before Christmas, around 9:38 when 20 beautiful children stormed through heaven’s gate. Their smiles were contagious, their laughter filled the air. They could hardly believe all the beauty they saw there. They were filled with such joy; they didn’t know what to say. They remembered nothing of what had happened earlier that day. “where are we?” asked a little girl, as quiet as a mouse. “This is heaven” declared a small boy. “We’re spending Christmas at God’s house”. When what to their wondering eyes did appear, but Jesus, their savior, the children gathered near. He looked at them and smiled, and they smiled just the same. Then He opened His arms and He called them by name. And in that moment was joy, that only heaven can bring those children all flew into the arms of their King and as they lingered in the warmth of His embrace, one small girl turned and looked at Jesus’ face. And as if He could read all the questions she had He gently whispered to her, “I’ll take care of mom and dad.” Then He looked down on earth, the world far below He saw all of the hurt, the sorrow, and woe, then He closed His eyes and He outstretched His hand, “Let My power and presence re-enter this land!” May this country be delivered from the hands of fools” “I’m taking back my nation. I’m taking back my schools!” Then He and the children stood up without a sound. “Come now my children let me show you around.” Excitement filled the space, some skipped and some ran. All displaying enthusiasm that only a small child can. And I heard Him proclaim as He walked out of sight, “In the midst of this darkness, I AM STILL THE LIGHT.”

While its virality makes clear that readings things like this is very comforting to a great many people, and while I’m sure the author had nothing but the best intentions, I think it’s really problematic in at least three ways.

The first is that it seems to suggest that we don’t have to do anything about the problem of gun violence in our society because Jesus says he’s going to take care of it. This is precisely the kind of “All Part of God’s Plan” thinking for which non-religious people rightly criticize religious people all the time.

The second is the mash-up of Church and State called for in the middle of the poem, wherein the author imagines Jesus saying that he’s going to take back this country from which his “power and presence” have been made absent (which sounds a bit too much like Mike Huckabee’s nonsense about how too little religion in schools is the real culprit of crimes like this one) [HT: Allen Stairs].

And the third is that not all the children who were killed in this terrible outburst of violence were Christian. The author simply presumes their Christianity — incorrectly, of course — and I can’t imagine that the non-Christian parents of a murdered child feel particularly comforted by such a non-inclusive message. Some might even be offended.

Chinese Food

Tonight, as is our custom, we’ll be eating Chinese food.

Alas, the whole family isn’t feeling well enough to make it to the annual Chinese buffet dinner at our synagogue.

Keeping in mind that meat is not an option in our house, what — specifically — should we order?

lazersilberstein asked: i kind of don't get your stance on nittel nacht. what do you expect people, who suffered for thousands of years under christendom, to do on the day its (false messianic, in their opinion) founder was born? there's a huge power imbalance that it seems you're ignoring.

I understand the historical reasons for the things that Jews did on Christmas Eve … especially not going out for a walk when people might attack you. In fact, here’s what I wrote in my original post:

I “get” the fact that Christmas Eve was once a bad time for Jews, an occasion for violence against them as part of the celebration of others.

But I can’t figure out two things:

1. As I wrote in my original post, why “anyone — especially a pious person — might depriving himself of the opportunity to perform a mitzvah in order to better deprive others of any good that might come of it.”

2. Why Jews, especially in America, would continue to “celebrate” Nittle Nacht today when repression and intolerance of Jews is (relatively) so low.

But to answer your question specifically, I suppose that I expect people to do what I did: Spend time with friends and family, watch a movie, read a book, and then head off to bed. I just don’t see any point to working against the spiritual well-being of others, whether or not one is on the receiving end of repression or intolerance.

Perfect In Every Way

excitablehonky replied to your photo: An honest-to-goodness “Jeopardy!” category today….

It was questions about war-related events that occurred on Christmas day.

Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes!

Then these would all have been clues about things that Bill O’Reilly wouldn’t have covered on his program devoted to polarizing nonsense.

Polarizing Nonsense

I wrote a whole post just now criticizing Fox News for their annual War on Christmas because it’s exhausting and polarizing.

And the crux of the post was, of course, that for someone who isn’t Christian there’s nothing more obviously fictional than the notion that Christians can’t celebrate their holiday, that the “political correctness” decried by Fox isn’t designed to make the powerful feel weaker but to make minorities feel included, and that the result of Fox’s War on Christmas is to make a whole bunch of people — who are already in the majority by a wide, wide margin — celebrate Christmas more aggressively.

And immediately two geniuses decided that I don’t know what I’m talking about because

1) I clearly don’t understand the difference between Fox News’ entertainment programming and Fox News’ news programming:

This is a damn morning show, not hard news. Learn the difference.

2) The show I must like — but that actually I’ve never watched for even one second — is bad too:

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell shouting over people he disagrees with and then kicking them off of his show is what they consider journalistic integrity.

So, basically, the argument in reply is that the people who are talking about the War on Christmas on Fox News have no journalistic standards. Which is precisely what I claimed at the beginning of my post. But the real point of the post was about how the trumped up War on Christmas exists only in the minds of Fox News and its viewers … but that the result of their constant harping on something that doesn’t exist is further polarizing of people in this country. Which is then demonstrated by the two geniuses who think that Fox News doesn’t have any responsibility to journalism or even to truth-telling.

So, yeah, polarizing nonsense.

Fox News should use that as their new slogan. It’s much more obviously true than Fair and Balanced. And it captures the spirit of what they’re doing and what their viewers have come to expect.

Christmas Not Christian

The really brilliant thing about the argument regarding the relationship between Christmas trees and Christmas is that non-religious defenders of the Christmas tree might very well be right: Christmas trees might not originally have had anything to do with their religion; they might have been co-opted from pre-Christian pagan rituals (though there is some debate about this). And, of course, Christmas itself might not actually have anything to do with the birth of the historical Jesus; the date might instead have been chosen as an extension or replacement of pagan ceremonies (though there is some debate about this).

But that doesn’t mean that Christmas and its trappings — trees, wreaths, blinking lights, and so on — aren’t now directly connected to a Christian holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus.

Now it’s certainly the case that there are plenty of non-religious Christians who today continue to dress their houses in the trappings of Christmas to celebrate the season or to have fun with their kids or remember their youth or whatever. But that doesn’t disconnect those trappings with the Christian holiday. Someday November/December might just be the season of lights, trees, and sales events. But, right now, it isn’t.

It might be the case that one day Jews and Muslims will drag trees into their houses and festoon their front yards with sparkling lights. But it’s telling that they don’t and that they haven’t. For the time being, and I suspect for the foreseeable future, it will only be Christians and those who grew up at least nominally Christian who do this sort of thing because, for people who aren’t in any way affiliated with Christianity, the lights and the tree seem clearly related to a religious celebration, much like the nativity scene that still quite often goes hand-in-hand with the lights and the tree.

And it’s also important to remember how this whole line of discussion got started: With Bill O’Reilly’s argument that Christmas and its trappings aren’t religious because Christianity isn’t an organized religion in the first place. That isn’t the same argument as the one outlined above: O’Reilly presumably thinks the trappings of Christmas are related to the holiday, but he wants to argue that the holiday itself isn’t religious. The current iteration of Fox’s War on Christmas defense takes this form because they want the holiday celebrated in the public sphere … not because they honestly believe that these Christmas traditions have nothing to do with their religion. It’s another sad attempt at an end-run around things like “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and an attempt to get things like the menorah removed from the public sphere (because it’s decidedly religious) so that the Christmas tree gets to stand on its own.