War on Christmas or on Christians?

A few years ago many (most) large retailers stopped using the word "Christmas". Instead they simply suggested that you might want to buy presents for some unnamed occasion. Even Christmas trees were relabeled "holiday trees" or "family trees". A search for Christmas merchandise on Walmart's web site helpfully corrected suggested "did you mean Holiday?". This was labeled the War on Christmas and pressure was put on retailers to go back to referring to December 25th as Christmas instead of the Winter Holiday.

This year I have seen a number of people on the left insist that there never was a war on Christmas. It was all an invention by Fox News. People who avoided the word "Christmas" only did it out of sensitivity to the many non-Christians among us who might feel oppressed by hearing the name of an important Christian holiday.

In prior years some of the more honest on the left have said that they have no problem with Christians celebrating Christmas as long as they do it in their own homes.

A recent column by Linda Chavez put this in perspective. Strangely, the column had nothing to do with Christmas. It was about the reaction to football player Tim Tebow who is known for praying in public. Chavez quotes Connecticut Rabbi Joshua Hammerman who wrote in Jewish Week:

If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants.

I had forgotten that the left thinks like this.

Here is the background on Hammerman's column. Sometime in the last few decades a group of intellectuals decided that Christianity is an intolerant and destructive religion and, if left unchecked, it will inevitably lead to another Holocaust. Accordingly, public expressions of Christianity must be suppressed. Further, politicians with strong religious beliefs are to be feared.

Once you know that the left thinks this way then the war on Christmas and the attacks on Tebow are easily understood.

The strange thing about this belief is how strongly it is rooted in the left's consciousness. It colors their views of everything else.

The TV show All American Muslims is an example. This shows on TLC and is designed to convince Americans that Muslims are just like everyone else. Since a show about normal people doing normal things is boring, the ratings for the show are dismal. Sponsors have dropped the show which has caused an uproar from the left (which does not watch the show, either).

But here's the thing - world-wide, there is much more violence being done in the name of Islam than Christ but it is ingrained into the left that only Christianity is violent. That world-view leaves them unable to see anyone else as violent or intolerant. Any attempts to point out flaws in Islam or elsewhere are taken as examples of Christian intolerance.

Which leaves us with a group that actually is trying to suppress any public mention of Christianity including Christmas. Right now they are failing so their fallback solution is to insist that this was never more than an invention by Fox News. But every now and then someone lets their real feeling slip in public.