Post by ck4829 on Feb 16, 2022 17:25:59 GMT
How the war on Christmas Became America’s Latest Forever War
Last week, a random New York City man made his mark on history by allegedly setting ablaze the 50-foot USA-themed Christmas tree outside the Fox News Channel’s headquarters. The fire was almost certainly not a political statement, having been set by a homeless man who recently exposed himself to reporters covering a trial elsewhere. But the rogue arsonist played a perfect part in a narrative that Fox largely invented, and has propagated relentlessly over the past two decades: the “war on Christmas,” a never-ending cultural conflict during which traditional, explicitly Christian celebrations of the holiday season are under assault from the sinister forces of secular pluralism.
Tucker Carlson declared the fire a “hate crime.” Correspondent Peter Doocy quizzed White House press secretary Jen Psaki on the subject during a press briefing. It wasn’t just an attack on an “American icon,” to quote “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt; it was direct evidence of a deeper rot in liberal governance. In Joe Biden’s America, to hear Fox tell it, not even our most anodyne and sentimental traditions are safe from rising crime in blue cities and states governed by bail-happy progressives.
You’d be forgiven for thinking the war on Christmas ended a long time ago, if it ever existed. Dec. 25 is still a holiday. Christmas trees, eggnog and lights are ubiquitous, seemingly more so every year. And if there was any doubt, Donald Trump — who proclaimed himself the war’s General Patton during the 2016 presidential campaign — took a victory lap of sorts on a recent Mike Huckabee-hosted Newsmax Christmas special: “When I started campaigning, I said, ‘You’re going to say “Merry Christmas” again,’ and now, people are saying it.”
And yet: According to a recent poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University, more Americans believe such a “war on Christmas” exists than at any point in the past decade.
It hasn’t just survived, it’s taken over. The “war on Christmas” has turned out to be simply a battle, a minor skirmish in a far larger war. Its hazily-defined, Bush-era complaint about encroaching liberal oppression and perfidy is now a part of our political landscape for good, coloring debates from criminal justice reform to election law to foreign policy. A conflict invented to fill right-wing cable airtime in the early 2000s has expanded to chase the endless boundaries of the social media era, subsuming the rest of the political landscape.
www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/18/war-on-christmas-525273
Last week, a random New York City man made his mark on history by allegedly setting ablaze the 50-foot USA-themed Christmas tree outside the Fox News Channel’s headquarters. The fire was almost certainly not a political statement, having been set by a homeless man who recently exposed himself to reporters covering a trial elsewhere. But the rogue arsonist played a perfect part in a narrative that Fox largely invented, and has propagated relentlessly over the past two decades: the “war on Christmas,” a never-ending cultural conflict during which traditional, explicitly Christian celebrations of the holiday season are under assault from the sinister forces of secular pluralism.
Tucker Carlson declared the fire a “hate crime.” Correspondent Peter Doocy quizzed White House press secretary Jen Psaki on the subject during a press briefing. It wasn’t just an attack on an “American icon,” to quote “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt; it was direct evidence of a deeper rot in liberal governance. In Joe Biden’s America, to hear Fox tell it, not even our most anodyne and sentimental traditions are safe from rising crime in blue cities and states governed by bail-happy progressives.
You’d be forgiven for thinking the war on Christmas ended a long time ago, if it ever existed. Dec. 25 is still a holiday. Christmas trees, eggnog and lights are ubiquitous, seemingly more so every year. And if there was any doubt, Donald Trump — who proclaimed himself the war’s General Patton during the 2016 presidential campaign — took a victory lap of sorts on a recent Mike Huckabee-hosted Newsmax Christmas special: “When I started campaigning, I said, ‘You’re going to say “Merry Christmas” again,’ and now, people are saying it.”
And yet: According to a recent poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University, more Americans believe such a “war on Christmas” exists than at any point in the past decade.
It hasn’t just survived, it’s taken over. The “war on Christmas” has turned out to be simply a battle, a minor skirmish in a far larger war. Its hazily-defined, Bush-era complaint about encroaching liberal oppression and perfidy is now a part of our political landscape for good, coloring debates from criminal justice reform to election law to foreign policy. A conflict invented to fill right-wing cable airtime in the early 2000s has expanded to chase the endless boundaries of the social media era, subsuming the rest of the political landscape.
www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/18/war-on-christmas-525273