It's the holiday season, so I thought I'd take a look at the state of the supposed "War on Christmas." I was hoping to point to a bunch of outrageous beliefs religious people have about Christmas this year, but instead, it seems the furor over the holiday being under siege has died down.
This is not, however, a sign of progress.
The phrase "War on Christmas" originated in 2000 on this blog post by Peter Brimelow, but it caught on shortly after a 2004 broadcast by Bill O'Reilly featuring a segment called "Christmas Under Siege."
"All over the country, Christmas is taking flak,” Reilly intoned, before pointing out that cities were erecting "holiday trees" instead of "Christmas trees" and pointing out instances of public schools banning religious content. From there, books were written, tweets were tweeted, and outrage was stoked until the phrase "War on Christmas" was known by all.
But the sentiment behind the "War on Christmas" dates back way further than its heyday in the early 2000s, to at least 1921, when noted antisemite (and car manufacturer) Henry Ford wrote: "Last Christmas most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated Someone's Birth."
While O'Reilly and his ilk tend to not specifically name an enemy in the War on Christmas, Ford wasn't shy. As you might suspect, according to Ford, the Jews were to blame:
Not only do the Jews disagree with Christian teaching — which is their perfect right, and no one dare question it — but they seek to interfere with it. It is not religious tolerance in the midst of religious difference, but religious attack that they preach and practice. The whole record of Jewish opposition to Christmas, Easter and certain patriotic songs shows that.
Post-war America's religiosity eventually led to prayer and Christmas celebrations in public schools, and that led to a backlash where courts ruled much of it was unconstitutional, and that time of uncertainty led to the publication of ur-War on Christmas texts like the pamphlet "There Goes Christmas?!" by Hubert Kregeloh of the John Birch Society:
The UN fanatics launched their assault on Christmas in 1958, but too late to get very far before the holy day was at hand...They are already busy, however, at this very moment, on efforts to poison the 1959 Christmas season with their high-pressure propaganda. What they now want to put over on the American people is simply this: Department stores throughout the country are to utilize U.N. symbols and emblems as Christmas decorations.
Scary stuff. Still, the John Birch society were not a potent cultural force, and weird ideas about "U.N. fanatics" churned under the surface of the U.S.'s cultural consciousness—until Fox New's early 2000s ascendency brought them to the surface.
While the sentiment behind the War on Christmas—"evil globalists/democrats/Jews are oppressing Christians"—is alive and thriving, right now the religious right is quiet about the "War on Christmas" itself, so quiet it's almost like they're embarrassed.
The outrage from years past is just gone. Even Starbucks' once-reliable choice in holiday cup design is failing to rile anyone up—the sources for this recent Sun article with the headline "Starbucks fans continue to boycott the popular chain and slam its ‘War on Christmas’ over controversial cup campaign" are:
Three links to the Facebook search for the phrase "war on christmas starbucks cups"
Gone are the days when Conservatives could base an entire book on the War on Christmas premise, or political figures could score easy points by promising they'll bring saying "Merry Christmas" back to the White House (even though it never left). Even the inclusion of a Satanic Christmas tree at a Wisconsin train museum this year didn't move the outrage needle. The War on Christmas is over, right?
Not exactly. It would be nice to think the people behind popularizing the "War on Christmas" concept have shut up about it because it's such a ridiculous idea, but really they've moved on because it's not sexy anymore. Consistently generating cultural outrage requires novelty. The enemies—modernity, Jews, "U.N. fanatics," liberalism, people of color, etc.— remain the same as they were when Henry Ford was around, but they have to be dressed in new costumes or people would stop paying attention. So Bud Light cans take the place of Starbucks cups. New scapegoats replace the old, and new, nonsensical, arguments are constructed. In the 1970s, opponents of the ERA helped shoot down the amendment by repeating the shibboleth that it would result in unisex bathrooms (like you have in your house.) In 2023, it's "trans people might use a bathroom I don't approve of!" It's always bathrooms with these people.
If you miss making fun of people for taking the "War on Christmas" seriously, don't despair. It will be back. The popularity of using Christmas as a flashpoint for our ongoing cultural conflicts ebbs and flows, but it's as much of a holiday classic as Maria Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You." Once people have sufficiently forgotten, some future Henry Ford/Hubert Kregeloh/Bill O'Reilly will say, "Look! The bad people are attacking Christmas!" and the war will be back on. Because it's not actually a war; it's just one of a million battles in a war that will never end.
