find the pagan spoiled
7 December 2009
9 comments
Even as a Christian, I never really “got” the “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” line. If indeed he were, why were there all these things which are not biblical? Trees, tinsel, ornaments, holly, mistletoe, lights, rampant commercialization (okay, they had that)… Even then, I knew that all the accoutrements of Christmas were lifted from Yule celebrations and Solstice rites. So when people get incensed about the phrase “happy holidays,” it tells you that they are perfectly fine with marginalizing everyone else, and that (implicitly) they believe America and Christmas go together like Iran and Sharia.
The following is from Shortpacked (webcomic) – incidentally, go to the link mentioned in the strip for a sad and pathetic laugh.
Hmm, too bad the wickermen never caught on here.
I don’t know if I can agree that people who get pissy about “Happy Holidays” are implicitly saying America and Christmas equals Iran and Sharia. Sharia informs all laws in Iran, and clearly Christmas isn’t even dogma, much less religious creed or legislative fiat. I think if those pissy folks were EDUCATED enough to understand the history behind the holiday, and STILL they got pissy … maybe.
It’s moralistic fallacy to presume that celebrants really have perspective on what they celebrate. Even the Christians themselves can’t get parity on the holiday; the Church of Christ does not celebrate it as a religious holiday, as it is not dictated to do so in the bible. Nor do they condemn it as “secular” (oh, the horror). Whereas the high-mass practitioners — Catholics, Episcopals, Presbyterians et al — all clearly revere it as Christ-Mass. (Oh the inherent irony in THIS point of view; we get to watch them all froth and make No True Scotsman arguments as to who really “owns” “Christmas.”)
I agree that it’s aggravating to have people rail and wail over the incendiary response to “Happy Holidays.” I deplore as well the way attempts to be “PC” about this silly holiday business eats up so much of people’s bandwidth. It’s perfectly designed for infighting — the decorating, the use of symbology, the misinterpretation and application of myth … it is ruinous regardless of how you slice and dice it. And it’s why we don’t “celebrate it” anymore.
I think Christians who demand a “Merry Christmas” are far more likely to spout the “America is a Christian Nation” litany. That is the same kind of thinking that produced the “Manifest Destiny” paradigm, one which didn’t mind killin’ a few folks (as long as they were un-Christian savages). Not that I’m saying every Christian is a murderer waiting to snap, but many have already developed a track record for trampling on civil rights. How many are there that want to make abortion illegal? How many have voted down gay marriage? How many do you think would, given the slightest chance, make gay sex illegal? We live in a nation where a child can see twenty murders in a night on network television, but can’t see a naked female breast. That, in a nutshell, is the “America is a Christian Nation” mindset.
The most *endearing* of responses is the Christian vandal. Tears down billboards, steals signs, spray paints over what offends him. Seriously, what a person thinks they can do in the name of Jesus freaking scares me. I’ll take a person who has no divinely-authored “moral compass” over a person who believes he’s on a mission from God (and will be forgiven for *anything*) ANY DAY. And, remember what percentage of prison inmates believe in god.
I have no use for Political Correctness. I am a HUGE fan of Historically Correct. And “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” ain’t it.
More fallacious arguments? Slippery slopes are slippery for a reason … do you equate all “Christianity” with the splinter “Evangelical?” Are you using a hasty generalization? Your argument sounds like one from an emotional center, not a logical one. (Nice attempt to inflame me emotionally as well with the tripping of trigger issues you know to be personally incendiary to me.) I presume you cite these examples to show ways that “American Sharia” is at work in this country.
You do know that Richard Dawkins says “Merry Christmas,” right? (http://tinyurl.com/86rn8o, http://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/6600853284, among others)
It seems more logical to blame a lack of education more than the doctrines of Christianity for the “state of the nation” you describe with the “sees murders but not naked breasts” comment. (As well as for the original blog entry regarding demanding “Merry Xmas” correlating to misinformed folk about the spiritual roots of the U.S.) I think a more educated populace would be able to trace the lack of connection between A and B (they’d be able to recognize the fallacious “affirming the consequent,” among a HOST of other unfortunate thought patterns). As to the Christian vandals, that’s a separate issue altogether, one of believers taking vigilante action on free-speech, not of the correlation of Christianity to Christmas to America as a Christian nation.
You say you are a fan of “historically correct.” Education would balm and boon that. Eradication or suppression of Christian doctrine would not.
Do not be confused; I feel I should remind you that I would categorically eliminate all religion if I could, altho clearly my statements above are a form of devil’s advocate.
P.S. Here’s what I’m talking about in terms of “emotional” not logical, per se.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnbXlkNavwo&feature=sdig&et=1261749587.29
He’s certainly entitled to his outrage, and he uses emotional mirroring effectively to drive his point home. Reasonable, yes. Logical? Not so sure. It’s perhaps more meritorious to apply the emotional contra-argument at the ‘making laws’ level as opposed to the ‘observance of holidays’ level. But my worry is this: in mass-accusations of them in the same way they accuse us, does it not make us equally complicit in reaching faulty conclusions? Are we not “equally guilty” of the same stereotypical judgments that lead to fallacious perspectives and not authentic ones?
Do I worry about this needlessly? Am I the only one worrying about this?
And a disturbing irony, maybe even an impossible paradox, is not lost on me — believers will not listen to logic. They will only listen to emotion and metaphor. Because that is the language they understand. The only rules they will heed will be the rules they use against others; they are familiar with that yoke, it seems.
Logic may assist us as we fight this war, but it will not win it. It is only through emotional appeal and subtle use of their own fallacies that I think we’ll make headway. Sickening, isn’t it?
Hm, I guess I don’t see what “slippery slope” argument you feel I am making. And I didn’t use those actions to “inflame” you or anyone, I used them because they are both immoral and historical.
I don’t care if Dawkins uses “Merry Christmas.” I feel certain, however, that he never will browbeat someone who uses “Happy Holidays” in his presence.
You do a loose rewrite of what I’m saying when you use the phrase “the doctrines of Christianity” as if I had used it. And furthermore, I think the tenor of my post clearly and overwhelmingly implicates fundamentalist Christianity, not mainline. And mainline Christians tend to be far more educated than fundies, so, yeah, I agree.
The slippery slope is the assumption that if one is dogmatic about the disliking the phrase “Happy Holidays” that this somehow is conscious approval of marginalizing anyone who doesn’t prefer “Merry Christmas” as the greeting of choice. (Which ironically, includes a prominent atheist.) I don’t think you can slide from that one statement into your conclusion. *QUOTE: So when people get incensed about the phrase “happy holidays,” it tells you that they are perfectly fine with marginalizing everyone else, and that (implicitly) they believe America and Christmas go together like Iran and Sharia.*
You, an atheist, may feel your post delineated a difference between a fundy and a non-fundy. But I know you have friends who feel that line of demarcation is not noted obviously and often enough, and that they are smeared with the same brush of judgment that the freaky fundies are. It’s a worthwhile call-out, I think, and one that I — an atheist — did not intuit in your comments, FWIW.
“like” = simile. “A good book is like a good meal.” I am not saying you can make a book into dinner. You know this, and you know I know it; why are you poking at it so?
I trust that my friends know if they exhibit the behavior about which I am speaking.
Fine, since you are so hell-bent on bringing emotion into it:
I *fear* a group of people that wants this to be a “christian nation.”
I am *embarrassed” that I still want to believe in a god.
I *love* when someone gets it, and says “damn, the Yahweh of the Old Testament was a cruel, cruel being”
I *hope* more people do so
I am *happy* being a non-believer (as I have said, happier than I ever was as a believer)
“making sense” makes me *feel good*
It’s not as if I’m advocating a nation of Vulcans. The Czech population is over half non-believing, and they’re pretty damn happy with it. That’s what I’d like for people to see – that they can be happy and moral WITHOUT A GOD. But they cannot be rational (at least about a Supreme Being) WITH one. In that sense, I KNOW that is the way hearts are going to be won: only if their mind comes along.
And here’s the answer to making “mass-accusations of them in the same way they accuse us:” don’t do it. “Prove a god exists” is NOT the same as “Prove he doesn’t.”
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