Great post.  I am a UCC minister.  I really have to laugh at the war on Christmas bullshit.  EVERYTHING

Sorry.  EVERYTHING we do to celebrate Christmas comes from the pre-Christian solstice festival of Yule.  The carols, the tree, the holly, the candles, all of it.  In Yule, you celebrated by getting shitfaced for twelve days and lighting things on fire.  Good times.  The wingnuts are attached to things that have nothing to do with their faith.  In my church, we celebrate the symbolism of the story on Christmas Eve.  The rest of the time we try to make it all as fun as possible.  Lighten up wingnuts.  A Merry Yuletide to all of you great Pandagonians who do so much to enlighten me and keep up my spirits during the whole year.

Beyond the dishonesty and gross exaggerations that’s turned ownership of a mostly moribund mailing list into “the voice of all American Catholics”; beyond his media-whore’s relentless stroll along upper 6th Ave; beyond the seething unwillingness to accept even the mild reforms of Vatican II; beyond his seeming inability to grasp the relevance of the Establishment Clause to “the public square”; beyond all that, Bill Donohue has always struck me as having the demeanour of a street thug. Given the typical gang member’s obsession with machismo and balls, it’s not surprising that an unsavoury character like Donohue would think this way, too.

Now you’ll have to excuse me ... I’m doing my annual reserve service in the Evil Liberal Atheist Army Air Service (ELAAAS), and someone’s just spotted a bogey on the radar. Army Flash, Army Flash: giant invisible sperm at 31.26N/35.7E—shoot to kill, boys!

So let me get this straight….
1. Virgin betrothed to loyal, decent man.
2. The message of the bible (Job aside) is that God rewards virtuous men.
3. God knocks up virgin, humiliating decent man in a rabidly patriarchal society.
4. Child of said union has devoted followers who have “neutering” issues.

Methinks Bethlehem needs a Freudian psychologist.
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And everything else aside it’s kind of weird that Christians don’t notice that God impregnating Mary is pretty much the apex of alpha male dominance behaviour.  BTW and on-topic, would now be a good time to refer back to the “please raise the rapist’s child while your wife has a productive work relationship with her rapist or else you’re a complete shit” thread?
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/duty_vs_desire/

I, too, am a UCC minister, and we’re descedants of the Pilgrims/Puritans who declared a real war on Christmas, actually forbidding its celebration!

Seeker,  I dunno that the message of the Bible is that God rewards virtuous men.  Jacob, who was a favorite of God’s, was a sleazy guy who deceived his own father in order to steal his brother Esau’s inheritance.  And then there is the story of Cain, in which God rejected Cain’s perfectly heartfelt offering of grain (after which Cain murdered Abel out of jealousy).

There is also evidence that “virtue” in the Bible simply means doing whatever the hell God wants.  So it is virtuous to tie up your son and stab him to death if God tells you to (Abraham and Isaac). Similarly, letting God knock up your fiancee is the very essence of virtue.

UCC ministers rock! Thanks for telling it like it is.

The “expulsion of baby jesus from creches”?! That’s a heck of a way to talk about labor.

I wish all wars were fought like the War on Christmas.

One side could sit in their war room and scream about how many nuclear bombs the other side was dropping, about how much territory the other side was taking, about how badly the other side was kicking their ass.

The other side would actually be sitting quietly at home playing “Scribblenauts.” They’d only hear about the war second-hand. “What, wait, we nuked Muncie? Do we even have nukes?”

Laurie:
Conceded.  Perhaps it I should rephrase as “the [BS] position of people who are trying to sell you the Bible is that virtuous men are rewarded”?

One side could sit in their war room and scream about how many nuclear bombs the other side was dropping, about how much territory the other side was taking, about how badly the other side was kicking their ass.

Wasn’t that a Star Trek TOS episode? Pretty close.

Anyway, another great take an the War on X-mas from Lance who really shows what Bill O’Reilly and his ilk are worried about.

I’d like to add that linking neutering with Christmas also ties in with the idea of creating a “muscular” Christianity, as opposed to feminized Christianity.

Vir Modestus:
“A Taste of Armageddon”, right?  I thought that too.

Io Saturnalia, everyone!

“Every sperm is sacred!”

UCC—The United Church of Canada, or Jeremiah, Orville, and Wilbur Wright’s old church?

I appreciate Xmas is about Christ’s nuts, not the chestnuts.

Seeker,

I actually think the “virtue = whatever crazy thing God wants you to do” plays into your Freudian theme.  You’ve got the scary, father figure who says you have to do whatever he says “just because,” and he’s knocked up the sweet innocent mother figure, who intercedes for us (at least for Catholics) when the big scary father God is mad at us.  A lot of religious belief is about nuclear family dynamics (at least dysfunctional and/or partiarchal ones) writ large.

Amanda, brave explorer that you are of the wingnut psyche, I believe you’ll find this this Julian Sanchez post very interesting.

Two excerpts:

Conservatism is a political philosophy; the farce currently performing under that marquee is an inferiority complex in political philosophy drag. Sure, there’s an element of “schadenfreude” in the sense of “we like what annoys our enemies.” But the pathology of the current conservative movement is more specific and convoluted.  Palin irritates the left, but so would lots of vocal conservatives if they were equally prominent—and some of them are probably even competent to hold office. Palin gets to play sand in the clam precisely because she so obviously isn’t. She doesn’t just irritate liberals in some generic way: she evokes their contempt. Forget “Christian conservative”; she’s a Christ conservative, strung up on the media cross on behalf of all God’s right-wing children.

What we saw in ‘04 was fury at the realization that ascendancy to political power had not (post-9/11 Lee Greenwood renaissance notwithstanding) brought parallel cultural power. The secret shame of the conservative base is that they’ve internalized the enemy’s secular cosmopolitan value set and status hierarchy—hence this obsession with the idea that somewhere, someone who went to Harvard might be snickering at them.

Could it be true that wingnuts “internalized the enemy’s secular cosmopolitan value set and status hierarchy”? This rings somewhat true to me, and explains all those top-seller books that are basically instruction manuals on how argue and “deal” with liberals. These people may have a serious inferiority complex. If so, perhaps liberals are not dealing with them the best way.

Yes, this is an incredibly condescending theory. What do you people think?

Hey revrick @ #6:  Yeah, that pilgrim/puritan thing is a real mixed blessing, isn’t it?  They outlawed Christmas because it was too much fun.  Good thing we followed the dissenters.

it wasn’t until an angel appeared to joseph, in a dream, confirming mary’s (let’s face, kind of unbelievable) story about god impregnating her, and making him an offer he (joseph) couldn’t refuse, that joseph actually bought into the whole thing. it’s the first recorded instance of the use of jewish guilt in the new testament.

btw, could someone neuter bill donohue, the guy definitely creeps me out.

“The “expulsion of baby jesus from creches”?! That’s a heck of a way to talk about labor.”

I think it’s actually talking about abortion, and they’re under the impression that we’ve found a way to go back in time and terminate Christ via a mass ejection of effigies from creches in the present.

A lot of religious belief is about nuclear family dynamics (at least dysfunctional and/or partiarchal ones) writ large.

The bible makes a whole lot more sense if you think of the deity as an abusive father. Starting with “Don’t eat that secret apple of mystery. Oh, yeah, I’m omniscient, so I know you’re going to do it. And then I’m going to punish you eternally for doing the thing I set you up to do.” And then the new testament is kinda “Hey, come back! I really love you! Come back so when all this is over I can punish you again, except the ones I don’t, but there’s nothing you can do to make sure you’re one of the ones who doesn’t get punished.”

All other issues aside, every year I note with amusement that you never, ever see a Nativity scene that shows a late-teen mother who just gave unassisted childbirth to an infant in a barn. Usually, the child, in scale, would come up to her waist, at least, and her hair, makeup, and spotless white and blue ensemble isn’t even mussed.

I always thought the people who in my teens were very focused on the whole resisting the commercialization of Christmas thing were something of spoilsports, but this whole forced commercialization thing blows my mind.

Not one but TWO UCC ministers on this blog?  ROFL

Of all the places on the internet, it figures you’d show up here.  Freaking heathens.

UCC = “Unitarians Considering Christ”

I’ve been UCC all my life, and for my sins I married a UCC minister.

You know, I think these people have a different bible than the one I have. Their jesus story doesn’t resemble the one I just read. At all.

Scott @10 - That’s all well and good, except that eventually the side that’s getting themselves all twisted in knots actually starts shooting (or bombing, or anthraxing) at the people they think they’re at war with.

You see it on small scale - Dr. Tiller, the UU murders, the ‘Obama wants my guns’ shooting spree, etc.

You also see it on international scale - we destroyed Iraq, at the cost of thousands of US lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and a trillion dollars (that’s just our own expenditure - no calculating how much damage we did to Iraq), all because they were, in the fever dreams of the neocons, already at war with us.  We couldn’t let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud, right?

And this shit isn’t even new.  Gulf of Tonkin, anybody?

You know, I think these people have a different bible than the one I have. Their jesus story doesn’t resemble the one I just read. At all.  [Mark]

You mean the one you wrote, right?

the banning of red and green at school functions

Um, did this ever actually happen?

(Next, the banning of green and orange on St. Patrick’s Day, to prevent fights.)

“the banning of red and green at school functions”

We were going to do this, but then someone pointed to the Gay Pride Flag in the dining room, and said it wouldn’t be as inclusive if we took two colors out.

You know, I think these people have a different bible than the one I have. Their jesus story doesn’t resemble the one I just read. At all.

Most of these knuckleheads don’t even realize two of the Gospels don’t say anything about Jesus’ birth, and the two that do tell entirely different stories.

Gracchus, that’s freakily close to Bethlehem. Intentional?

Pretty much, what Ron O. said, minus the liquor.  I get to buy presents for people I like?  And bake cookies?  And nobody thinks this is odd, like they might if I picked Mickey Mouse’s birthday to celebrate instead?  Sign me up.

“the banning of red and green at school functions”

I can’t speak to school functions at all, but one thing that’s always fascinated me about Teh War On Christmas is how much of it centers around businesses, especially retail.  I’m wondering if they’re not extrapolating from the occasional presence of a blue and white (for Hanukkah) aisle of decorations and ephemera at the big box store.  They Took Away One Of Our Red And Green Aisles And Gave It To The Joooooz! 

What the fundies really seem to be railing against is the visible presence of people who are explicitly not Christian in the US.  Which, while it sometimes becomes an issue in public schools, is of necessity present in the consumer world.  I’m guessing this didn’t used to be so obvious in the era before megachains and constant media saturation.  40 years ago most people shopped at small regional chains which didn’t advertise nationally.  So if you live in Kansas you might be totally unaware that people halfway across the country are shopping for Hanukkah around the same time you’re shopping for Christmas.  Now you see Gap ads on TV and feel that the existence of Jews is being shoved in your face, because Gap needs to use one commercial to market to several different demographics all over the country. 

Whoever pointed out the connections between the end of segregation and important changes in American capitalism in that thread from last week (BlackBloc, is that you?) was spot the fuck on.  The War On Christmas is a remnant of the reason for those changes.

If wingnuts are so easily neutered, why are there any left?

Two words:  Cabbage Patches.

I was about to school some idiot that Jesus wasn’t born in December because the shepherds wouldn’t have been out in the fields with their flock in the winter…then I realized that was like arguing over when Zeus came down from Mt. Olympus and knocked up a mortal woman with Hercules, or trying to explain to my daughter how Santa’s elves could make Nintendo DSi’s.

A better woman than I once pointed out: “Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.”

Bill Donohue has no idea what he’s talking about; the real shame is that he continues to be given a platform for his unstable meanderings.

You know, when you watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” you get an idea of what the War on Christmas used to be about.

People hated that stores were using Christmas to sell things.  Like Jesus being ticked off at the merchants inthe temple, Christmas was supposed to be a religious time, and all the cramming of Santa Claus and Rudoph and buy buy buy was anathema.

It’s part of why I think it’s so funny that Donohue and O’Reilly are having little shitfits about merchants marketing to people of all faiths.  40 years ago they’d would have been offended to be included in the commercials.  Today they whine that anyone else is included inthe commercials.

It’s not Christmas anyway, you assholes.  It’s Advent.  No one should put their trees up till Christmas eve, if you want to get traditional about it.  The whole “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men” vibe is seriously harshed by people screaming “Merry Christmas” as an ignorant threat.

@42 - I’m getting seriously annoyed by these folks turning perfectly normal, innocent, and even well-meaning expressions into insults and threats.  I’m not that old, but used to be that somebody could say, “God bless you,” or “Merry Christmas,” or even “I’m praying for you,” and it wasn’t a bad thing.  The aggressive invocations are so disturbing that I now react negatively (though I stifle it) even when there’s no malice, or even when there are good intentions, behind the words.

I do think that Julian Sanchez post is correct. It really goes along with a lot of Amanda’s and Digby’s posts, and makes the corpus of work on wingnuttitude that much stronger.

The bible makes a whole lot more sense if you think of the deity as an abusive father

Lewis Black does a great bit on this – “How did got treat the first man to believe in just one god - Hey Abraham, come here, and bring your kid, were gonna barbeque him”

Getting back to the whole “neutering” aspect of Donahue’s rant, I must concur with Amanda that it’s a curious verb choice, to say the least. It is certainly suggestive about the totality of his worldview, for one thing does come through is how imperialistic his claims are.
Having read “In Search of Paul” by Crossan and Reed last year, I have become much more attuned to the contrast between the theology of the early Christian church and the theology of Rome, with its insistence that Caesar is Lord. They point to the opposition between Paul’s blessing of ‘grace and peace,’ and Rome’s assertion of ‘victory and peace,’ a belief system that was visually asserted over and over in Roman architecture. They descibe what it must have been like entering a Roman city like Corinth, encountering a monumental display depicting the capative nations being subjugated by Rome, and them being grateful for it! Every one of those captive nations was personified as a prostrate female being raped male Rome/Caesar bestride her, his sword/spear piercing her body.
Like imperial Rome, Donahue wants to dominate and crush all opposition to his worldview. In that, Donahue is far closer to Augustus Caesar than he is to Christ. If anyone’s making war on Christmas, it’s him!

#43 - i totally agree.  I always wait for whomever I’m talking to say their thing before I respond.  If they say “Merry Christmas”, that’s what I say.  If they say “Happy Holidays”, that’s what I say.  Because, though I am not Christian, I was raised one, and it makes me sick to hear how they’ve turned such a simple phrase into a war cry/demand for capitulation.  I’d rather avoid that mess. 

Donohue and his privileged whiny entitled ilk make everything worse.

  If wingnuts are so easily neutered, why are there any left?

Two words:  Cabbage Patches.

Wait a minute - are yiou suggesting that families adopting ugly brainless heartless and soulless substitutes for children twenty or thirty years ago has something to do with the current crop of wimgnuts?

Gracchus, that’s freakily close to Bethlehem. Intentional?

Yes. In its eternal vigilance, ELAAAS Interceptor Command pays special attention to the area around those co-ords, from the Sea of Galilee down to Be’er Sheva, due to historic activity in that area by the magical sperm forces of the Invisible Bearded Sky Man™

Not to worry, though: our black-uniformed, cackling forces of atheist doom investigated the spotter’s sighting hours ago, only to find that they were in fact fluffy, tadpole-shaped clouds. Being killjoys who hate children and puppies, the pilots made a special effort to fly through the pretty cloud formations, obliterating them from the sky.

What the fundies really seem to be railing against is the visible presence of people who are explicitly not Christian in the US.  Which, while it sometimes becomes an issue in public schools, is of necessity present in the consumer world.  I’m guessing this didn’t used to be so obvious in the era before megachains and constant media saturation.  40 years ago most people shopped at small regional chains which didn’t advertise nationally.  So if you live in Kansas you might be totally unaware that people halfway across the country are shopping for Hanukkah around the same time you’re shopping for Christmas.  Now you see Gap ads on TV and feel that the existence of Jews is being shoved in your face, because Gap needs to use one commercial to market to several different demographics all over the country.

Word, Opoponax.  And, you know what, being not Christian in Kansas or its equivalent meant being very very quiet.  I remember being shushed by my mom when I was in a store in my hometown, asking about where all the dreidels were (I had been living in a Larger City for a couple of years, and had forgotten how to hide from the goyim).

I’m wondering if they’re not extrapolating from the occasional presence of a blue and white (for Hanukkah) aisle of decorations and ephemera at the big box store.  They Took Away One Of Our Red And Green Aisles And Gave It To The Joooooz!

Pretty much. For example, from the Lance Mannion piece linked above:

A source of mine who works at the local paper fielded a call from an incensed reader who, reacting to a story about a giant menorah that a nearby city had put up on a bridge for Hanukkah, demanded to know “Why isn’t there a Christmas tree up anywhere?”

My source asked the man if he had read the stories in the newspaper about the Christmas tree lighting in his town, and the one in the town next to that, and in the town next to that, and downtown in the city with the menorah on the bridge, and in every town and city and hamlet in the entire country except for Kiryas Joel?

“Um…” the man said.

I’m not sure if my source asked him or wishes she had, “You’re a big fan of Bill O’Reilly, aren’t you?”

But before she hung up on him she did wish him, “Happy Holidays!”

It’s not the absence of Xmas decor that upsets them so much as the evidence that non-Xtians are tolerated in American society.

Anyone working for a media outlet who has to pick up the phones will speak to this kind of bigot sooner or later, especially during the holidays. There’s something about this time of year that brings out the bile in lonely and bitter people—go and figure. The only thing worse is working for a madhouse media outlet where those grumpy old hatemongers are the hosts and honoured guests.

For the record, I enjoy the holiday season—it’s particularly special in NYC, and I hope that Amanda and Marc are taking it all in as new residents.

<i>I was about to school some idiot that Jesus wasn’t born in December because the shepherds wouldn’t have been out in the fields with their flock in the winter</i?

Lucky for you you didn’t expose your ignorance about raising sheep in the Middle East. Realize that the rainy season in Israel runs from October through May. By December, enough new green growing things have sprung up from the rains to provide excellent grazing for sheep. As one field was eaten down, the shepherds would have moved their flocks to untouched pasture. In summer and early fall, fields would have turned brown, and sheep would be fed on stored harvested crops.

By December, enough new green growing things have sprung up from the rains to provide excellent grazing for sheep.

Actually, it’s not the grazing that points to it being spring—it’s the lambs.  The shepherds would be watching over their flocks by night during lambing season to keep an eye out for any ewes giving birth and to chase away any opportunistic predators.  At any other season they would hang out in their tents at night, not be out in the open waiting for angelic messengers to stop by.

@ #25 ummeli:  oh my goddess, you’re married to one?  You must be atoning for something very, very wicked.  Happy Holidays!

Truthfully it was and is the Pagans who engage in literal worship of the reproductive organs.

Like that spiritual allegory known as the Song of Solomon, found in the Old Testament?

Good point.

You know, I think these people have a different bible than the one I have. Their jesus story doesn’t resemble the one I just read. At all.

Yep.  All that stuff about an inn being too crowded is completely made-up.  Why isn’t Donahue crying about that war on Christmas?  Churches are just making up random stuff that’s not even the Bible, but my bet is that the crowded inn story served some purpose long ago (maybe hatred of whatever group that innkeeper belonged to), and so it’s allowed to stay.

“Yep.  All that stuff about an inn being too crowded is completely made-up.

Nah, the innkeeper was like Donahue and didn’t believe in renting rooms to Jews.

@ #25 ummeli:  oh my goddess, you’re married to one?  You must be atoning for something very, very wicked.  Happy Holidays!

Maybe I was a catholic priest in a past life.

”(maybe hatred of whatever group that innkeeper belonged to)”

He belonged to the group known as “innkeepers”, only slightly more popular than millers in the medieval world

Luke 2:7 “and she brought forth her son—the first-born, and wrapped him up, and laid him down in the manger, because there was not for them a place in the guest-chamber.”

So the inn thing is in the text. What’s this I keep hearing about us infidels knowing the Bible backwards and forwards?

More precisely, “και ετεκεν τον υιον αυτης τον πρωτοτοκον και εσπαργανωσεν αυτον και ανεκλινεν αυτον εν τη φατνη διοτι ουκ ην αυτοις τοπος εν τω καταλυματι”

I once saw a painting of a Nativity scene in which the Holy Family was replaced by an abstract design that looked (to me at least) like a stylized penis-in-vagina.  Never did find out what was behind that, or what the artist’s actual intention was.

I have always thought that the innkeeper at Bethlehem should be regarded as the patron saint of making accommodations in an emergency, and his feast day should be observed with a rousing chorus of “Pallet on the Floor”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39RBm4tH9cA

They’re right, though, that we shouldn’t call them “Holiday” trees.  We should call them Yule trees.

Have you ever noticed how rare it is for even the loudest Christians to put any explicitly Christian symbols on their so-called “Christmas” trees?