What Fox News won’t tell you about the ‘War on Christmas’
If you believe that there is a war on Christmas, then you probably think that it stems from some neo-liberal longing to rid the world of Christianity. While the language surrounding the holidays has come under fire from conservative monologuist Bill O’Reilly and his cronies at Fox News, the actual spirit of Christmas has been constantly destroyed by the very conservatives that deride the loss of saying “Merry Christmas.”
The war on Christmas began with the corporations back in the 1980s. At a time when GE was making more money than anyone else, Jack Welch came in and changed everything. He fired a substantial number of people during the holiday season so that GE could make even more money. While he defends his decision as a smart move and he says that those people received generous severance packages, it was a move done without compassion and clearly without remorse. It also paved the way for other companies to do the same. Even if Welch’s salvo wasn’t the first, it was the most devastating.
Neutron Jack’s idea was new. Before then, people could be guaranteed of working for a company for their lifetime and receiving a retirement benefit for their years of service. That is no longer the case as people are fired a few months before their retirement benefits are vested, or they are hired on a part time so the company doesn’t have to pay any benefits at all.
Companies used to give their employees Christmas bonuses. Some people counted on these bonuses to make ends meet. When they got a Christmas ham the next year, they weren’t only disappointed, they were put into a financial bind. When they got nothing the year after that, it was de rigueur. Who wants a Christmas ham anyway?
During World War I, a time when violence was a fact of everyday life, the Germans on Christmas Eve in 1914 decided they weren’t going to fight any more. They proposed a truce in broken English to the French and English soldiers in the opposite trenches. For one night, these deadly enemies agreed to partake in the spirit of Christmas with the spontaneous truce allowing them to bury the dead and exchange gifts. The war would rage on another 4 years, but for one night, Christians observed the Christian holiday with love and peace, during a time that it would seem almost impossible.
Flash forward to our world now, where most of us live in relative peace though we fear for our lives, where we are divided by economics and blame it on race, where the Christmas Spirit has been perverted to buy as much as you can so the economy can keep moving forward. We kill each other over Black Friday deals and still think immigrants are taking our jobs (with apologies to Michelle Obama). We blame homelessness and joblessness on people being lazy and unwilling to work. We refuse to show love to one another as we slowly destroy the very fabric of our culture with words of hate, attitudes of intolerance and outlooks towards violence.
If words matter more than actions to you and, with the unpresidented election of Trump and his subsequent backing out of the very things that got him elected (‘Lock her up’ “plays great before the election,” maybe it won’t be a wall, and the dumping of the campaign slogan ‘drain the swamp’), there is plenty of evidence that words matter more than actions for all the wrong reasons, then please feel free to be concerned about whether people and businesses say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” However, if the true meaning of Christmas is what matters, look at the charity, love and peace that are missing from your community and your country and do something to bring back the spirit. For it is only with the spirit that the words can matter, otherwise, it’s a whole bunch of hot air ejaculated as a reflex to ease the aching conscience of a nation mired in the antithesis of what Christmas is supposed to mean.
The war on Christmas began with the corporations back in the 1980s. At a time when GE was making more money than anyone else, Jack Welch came in and changed everything. He fired a substantial number of people during the holiday season so that GE could make even more money. While he defends his decision as a smart move and he says that those people received generous severance packages, it was a move done without compassion and clearly without remorse. It also paved the way for other companies to do the same. Even if Welch’s salvo wasn’t the first, it was the most devastating.
Neutron Jack’s idea was new. Before then, people could be guaranteed of working for a company for their lifetime and receiving a retirement benefit for their years of service. That is no longer the case as people are fired a few months before their retirement benefits are vested, or they are hired on a part time so the company doesn’t have to pay any benefits at all.
Companies used to give their employees Christmas bonuses. Some people counted on these bonuses to make ends meet. When they got a Christmas ham the next year, they weren’t only disappointed, they were put into a financial bind. When they got nothing the year after that, it was de rigueur. Who wants a Christmas ham anyway?
During World War I, a time when violence was a fact of everyday life, the Germans on Christmas Eve in 1914 decided they weren’t going to fight any more. They proposed a truce in broken English to the French and English soldiers in the opposite trenches. For one night, these deadly enemies agreed to partake in the spirit of Christmas with the spontaneous truce allowing them to bury the dead and exchange gifts. The war would rage on another 4 years, but for one night, Christians observed the Christian holiday with love and peace, during a time that it would seem almost impossible.
Flash forward to our world now, where most of us live in relative peace though we fear for our lives, where we are divided by economics and blame it on race, where the Christmas Spirit has been perverted to buy as much as you can so the economy can keep moving forward. We kill each other over Black Friday deals and still think immigrants are taking our jobs (with apologies to Michelle Obama). We blame homelessness and joblessness on people being lazy and unwilling to work. We refuse to show love to one another as we slowly destroy the very fabric of our culture with words of hate, attitudes of intolerance and outlooks towards violence.
If words matter more than actions to you and, with the unpresidented election of Trump and his subsequent backing out of the very things that got him elected (‘Lock her up’ “plays great before the election,” maybe it won’t be a wall, and the dumping of the campaign slogan ‘drain the swamp’), there is plenty of evidence that words matter more than actions for all the wrong reasons, then please feel free to be concerned about whether people and businesses say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” However, if the true meaning of Christmas is what matters, look at the charity, love and peace that are missing from your community and your country and do something to bring back the spirit. For it is only with the spirit that the words can matter, otherwise, it’s a whole bunch of hot air ejaculated as a reflex to ease the aching conscience of a nation mired in the antithesis of what Christmas is supposed to mean.