Happy Last Refuge

Posted on December 20, 2005 in Falsehoods Festivals

Europeans and other nonAmericans who follow our politics may have heard about the Christmas controversy that loudmouth milquetoast Bill O’Reilly has launched in the wake of recent Bush Administration scandals. Patriotism is no longer an excuse for supporting the Bush regime, so O’Reilly has conceived a nonexistent “war on Christmas”.

O’Reilly finds the phrase “Happy Holidays” suspect. “They’re denying the birth of Christ!” he proclaims. I don’t know who spilled O’Reilly’s coffee while uttering those words, but the Faux News demogogue has certainly created nothing from nothing.

I’ve heard the phrase “Happy Holidays” all my life. I was born in 1958. It wouldn’t surprise me if the line predates me by a decade or more. While I was growing up and being educated in a Catholic school, I supposed that the Holidays referred to were Christmas, New Year’s Day, and the Epiphany. When I became aware of Hannukah, it wasn’t hard for me to incorporate it into the phrase. It also covers Dilwa and Kwanzaa very nicely.

Diversity frightens O’Reilly and his extremist pals so much that they are willing to tear up the concept of “peace on earth and good will towards humans” to preserve the singular mindset that is anti-Christmas in every respect. If they read their Bible, they would realize that Christ didn’t give a hoot about Christmas trees, ornaments, and the other gaudy paraphenalia of the season. He was born in a manger, for crying out loud. Meanwhile the Roman occupiers celebrated a loud and boisterous Saturnalia.

If O’Reilly truly wants to celebrate the spirit of Christmas, he should mind his strife-provoking ways. (Remember that Strife is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. O’Reilly is good at it.) He should remember the Feast of the Holy Innocents which recalls to us the madness of King Herod, slaughterer of all the children in Bethlehem. (Does anyone else think this bears a connection to the shooting of Rigioberto Alpizar?) O’Reilly’s “anything, any price to get a terrorist” philosophy smacks of the same kind of thinking and it has produced the death of thousands of innocent Iraqis, Afghanis, a Brazilian, and one bipolar who happened to go crazy on a flight with federal sky marshals aboard.

But O’Reilly, I think, wants to demonstrate that he can show Samuel Johnson to be wrong. Patriotism is not the last refuge of a scoundrel. Christmas is.

Wary Christmas everyone.