Hallelujah! The War on Christmas Is Over!

Even if war for real in this world is too much with us….

The huge compound ills roiling the nation and the world are seriously dampening my Christmas merriment this year. But one thing does calls for a hearty seasonal celebration.

I’ve heard nary a peep about the War on Christmas – though I just learned that Faux News, typically, carped about it yet again (see below) – that not long ago was, to some poor fools, raging like a forest, prairie and house fire combined. It seriously twisted the knickers of wrong-headed right wingers, pseudo-Christians, the perpetually-outraged conservative commentariat and other ignoramuses who like to loudly whinge about what’s largely small potatoes. Especially when compared with all the genuinely serious pressing problems facing our nation and the world at large.

I’d love to declare peace in that conflict as well as the many other actual wars of death and destruction that plague this planet as we approach the annual celebration of the birth of the man known as the Prince of Peace (even if many wise men and women among Biblical scholars assert that Jesus was more likely born in June). But the battles waged by the forces of intolerance and ignorance have simply moved on to other fronts that have rankled their eternally-simmering resentment and rage.

Such as recovering drunk and blowhound Hunter Biden, women who might choose to have an abortion or have medically-justified cause for one (like my fellow Texan Kate Cox), Woman of the Year Taylor Swift, wokeism, DEI, CRT, LGBTQ+, a weaponized DOJ, yada yada yada… That’s just a very small sampling from a long list that riles up far too many dysnfunctional tools.

But when I attend the Christmas Eve service at my warm and humane local Episcopal church, while I am on my knees in prayer – or what passes for that in the way I try to honor and communicate with whatever higher power I not just believe but and am pretty goddamn certain exists – I will give thanks for some relief from that nettlesome notion of some War on Christmas.

When the crusade to save Christmas from the infidels of liberalism and its delinquent cousin of Leftism, atheism and Grinchism first reared its horned head, my very rational response was a perplexed WTF?! Really? The nuclear rhetorical bomb leading the attack, as far as the defenders of the Holy Day saw it, was “Happy Holidays.” Yep! A vile, Godless threat! Once again, WTF?! Really?

I like to say “Happy Holidays” this time of year as a gesture of respect for all my fellow souls in this multifaceted society of ours – an act I am certain would earn a thumbs-up from Jesus (who may well have spent his missing years in the East studying religious texts and traditions far older than his Jewish faith). After all, there are many other religious holidays in this season. For starters, the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah; lest we forget, Jesus was a Jew. And the movement he started was strictly Jewish until Paul came along and started spreading it among gentiles.

Late December is also when African-Americans celebrate Kwanzaa. Since I have a Black nephew-in-law and two mixed-race grandnieces, I’m all in on that one. And appreciate that my niece Melissa did her part against the scourge of white (trash) supremacy.

We must not ignore the monumental significance of Bodhi Day, aka Rohatsu, which celebrates the Buddha achieving enlightenment. Or Posadas Navidenas, the Latinx celebration that honors the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. Plus there’s the pagan Wicca yule and Winter Solstice as well as Zartosht No-Diso. December is quite the abundant interfaith month.

Image by Gordon Johnson/Pixabay

The perpetually agitated right-whingers would try to slam me as “woke,” even if, when asked, some of the loudest anti-woke gripers can’t even say what the term means. To me, awakening is a good thing, especially on Christmas morning when presents await under the tree. And that Rohatsu awakening thing worked out quite beneficially for Siddhartha Gautama. I’ll follow his lead rather than Goobernator Ron DeSatan.

Christmas remains in no apparent danger as best I can tell. Certainly not here in the proverbial manger of consumerist capitalism that is, these day, the Disunited States of America. The birthday of the Son of God fuels a massive attack of shopping that boosts the economy upwards in a heavenly direction. Jesus be praised! When this year I started seeing Xmas offerings in stores in late September, it was obvious that the “war” was an absurd notion. Some people need to just chill out like the current weather.

I was supposed to be born on Christmas, but in typical fashion of my younger years, I arrived late, on January 7, Russian Christmas (more properly Eastern Orthodox Christmas). I guess I did contribute to the War on Christmas, albeit unintentionally, when at age four I crawled under the family tree we had all helped deck with lights and ornaments, and knocked it over. (My highly neurotic Dad short circuited and went ballistic; in retrospect, an understandable reaction to demon child number three bringing that pesky war on the day of JC’s birth into our home.) But in the end the tree was righted, lights strung back up into it and fallen festoonery restored. I didn’t get coal in my stocking.

The year after my crawling guerilla attck on the Christmas tree, I got a Lionel train set for Christmas. Neil Young would heartily approve

I suppose I later made up for my youthful attack on the annual family fir. A mere two years after the incident I was anointed as the Boy Nicholas in our Whiskeypalian parish presentation of Benjamin Britten’s cantata “Saint Nicholas.” I was told I was chosen not so much for the quality of my voice as my projection. Singing “God be glorified” in my boy soprano best 10 times in a row should win me brownie points with the higher power and also earn me some slack for my occasional bah humbugging at this time of year. And hopefully also give me dispensation for getting rather sauced on Christmas Eve in 1973 in Nazareth, Jesus’s hometown.

So I wish everyone the Happiest of Holidays and hope that 2024 brings peace where it is so sorely needed, and that we get respite come November from the forces of inanity, hatred and evil. And I gift all of you dear readers below with the coolest playlist of seasonal songs you’ll ever hear.