Troubled by Christmas

 

Conservatives often complain this time of year about a war on Christmas by the leftists – generally attributing it to leftist disdain for Christianity. Many leftists do have a problem with the Christmas season. It has become a point of political correctness not to say Merry Christmas. There are scolding warnings in various media that references to Christmas should be avoided to avoid offending or “marginalizing” people who do not celebrate the holiday. Ads for retail companies talk only about holiday shopping and holiday gifts, not Christmas shopping and gifts, as though the corporate weasels running those companies expect to make their numbers and get their bonuses based on purchases of Kwanzaa gifts or New Year’s presents. The conservatives have a point, but I think their explanation misses something important.

There surely are leftists who are hostile to Christianity, and that likely explains some of the so-called war on Christmas, but not all or, to me, even most. Leftists usually say or do nothing about Easter, and Easter is a far more nearly completely religious holiday than Christmas. Christmas in our time is as much a secular holiday as a religious one, and many non-Christians enjoy Christmas and the Christmas season. Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, decorating trees, decking halls, giving presents, Christmas dinners, and a season to be jolly have little or nothing to do with Christianity. I think that for many leftists, the real difficulty is not with the Christmas but with the merry. A season of ordinary, unsupervised people enjoying themselves and their lives, vigorously displaying good will to the people they meet, giving and receiving presents, and generally feeling benevolent and happy, on their own without external direction goes against many of the left’s fundamental notions of how the world is and should be. It is no wonder many lefties do not care for it and feel uncomfortable with it or even threatened by it.

They might feel worse if they knew how little effect their feelings and opinions have had. Except among cowardly corporations which can be bullied into just about anything and the generally left leaning traditional media, their efforts seem to me to have been mainly a failure. In their private lives people behave as they like and enjoy Christmas. That’s good. They should keep it up.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year.

No Cease Fire Before Victory

 

People need to remember some basic facts about the war in Gaza. This war has a right side and a wrong side. Israel is right and should win. Hamas is wrong and should lose. It is right and appropriate to have regret and compassion for casualties among civilians. However when one side hides behind civilian human shields as a matter of strategy, it, not its opponent, is morally responsible for those casualties. The civilian casualties are the fault of Hamas and not the armed forces of Israel, and it is wrong to demand that those armed forces stop or back off because Hamas has human shields. Demanding a cease fire before Hamas is defeated is demanding that Hamas gets away with what it did on October 7^th and remains capable of doing it again. It is interesting that those demanding a cease fire because of casualties among civilians in Gaza do not suggest or even mention the obvious way to minimize them. Hamas’s “fighters” could dig in in strong points from which they had evacuated civilians and fight it out like men. My guess is that is because they either side with Hamas or realize that there is no chance Hamas’s murders would behave as soldiers, or both.