Chris Buttars is part of my theory that there’s more concentrated kookery in every inhabited square mile of Utah than anywhere else in the nation. You just have to live there for a few years to really understand it. (Having a polygamist wife trying to get me to join her Amway downline was just the tip of the iceberg when I lived there.)

That said, can you please not sent us to WorldNutDaily? This article was in the Salt Lake Tribune as well, and I don’t feel dirty when I click on those links.

Imagine being Buttars’ wife or kid. That’s gotta be one effed-up household dynamic with him in the house.

There’s always the free market angle to convince Republicans.  The market has decided to say Happy Holidays.  It turns out that unfettered free markets are not very Christian.

This is incredibly stupid, even ignoring the fact that not everyone celebrates Christmas.  Everyone knows “Christmas” season in the retail world starts in mid-November.  Who wants to feel like an idiot saying Merry Christmas before we’ve even had Thanksgiving?

Useful idiots they’re called.  And they are, indeed, both.

These guys never disappoint… retardedly awesome.

Everyone knows “Christmas” season in the retail world starts in mid-November

Mid-November?

Mid-November?

The “Christmas” season around here started November 1st.  Halloween ended and pop - Christmas stuff was out right next to the paltry selection of Thanksgiving decorations.  Fliers started coming in the newspapers about “early Christmas shopping” and the TV news reporters started doing their yearly stories on retailers preparing for the holidays.

Like Rep. Buttars, I too am so very tired of this “Christmas war”.  I wish that Christmas would retreat back to the month of December and let Thanksgiving have its month back.  At this rate, Halloween is going to get drawn into the Christmas war as well and soon elves and goblins will be having gun battles in the streets as the defenders of Halloween fall before the might of the powerful Kringle juggernaut.

The “Christmas” season around here started November 1st. 

‘Round here, we tend to see Halloween stuff boxed up and moved off the aisles before Halloween, so they can move the Christmas junk in.

Fuck it, I’m just going to quote IOZ:

The gradual erosion of “Merry Christmas” in favor of “Happy Holidays” doesn’t mark a moral retreat in the face of religious multiculturalism or anti-Christian laïcité. It marks the commerce-driven extension of a shopping season, one that now extends from before Halloween to the post-New Year sales. “Happy Holidays” isn’t culturally inclusive; it’s commercially inclusive.

At this rate, Halloween is going to get drawn into the Christmas war as well and soon elves and goblins will be having gun battles in the streets as the defenders of Halloween fall before the might of the powerful Kringle juggernaut.

Mmph, I’m already annoyed at the local churches in my area fear-mongering every Halloween / Samhain about “poisoned candy” (show me ONE case where it didn’t turn out to be the parent, seriously) to try to depress neighborhood turnout and redirect to the “safe” church where they can try to proseletize to the kids when Mommy and Daddy aren’t watching.

Where’s zombie Thomas Jefferson when you NEED him?

Everyone knows “Christmas” season in the retail world starts in mid-November.

Man, I wish they’d wait until mid-November.  We had Christmas crap in Los Angeles by about October 1.

Maybe Buttars should make everyone say “Merry Christmas” year-round since retailers keep pushing it earlier and earlier anyway.

(I don’t know if they still do it, but Nordstrom used to refuse to put up any Christmas decorations until the day after Thanksgiving.  At some point, they had to start putting signs up to explain themselves since every other goddamn retailer from Rite-Aid to Macys was putting their stuff up by mid-October.)

Ah.  Utah.  Whatever would we do without Utah? 

Is there any way we could simply excise the entire land area of that state from the planet and sent it off into the Sun? 

Jeebus

The courts would slap this down before you could say “establishment clause”.

I wish that Christmas would retreat back to the month of December and let Thanksgiving have its month back. 

Not me. I consider the extension of Xmas into November to be an admission of surrender that they can’t successfully turn Thanksgiving into a stupid fucking marketing vehicle like they have with every other holiday. Instead it manages to mostly be about a bunch of people getting together and having a nice dinner together, only intermittently marred by the occasional idiot who insists on going shopping at 3am the next day.

So let me get this straight:

It is equally okay for non-Christian workers to be forced to wish someone a merry Christmas, and for health care workers to deny health care to patients based on their own beliefs.

Wield your Merry Christmas like a sword!  It’s not a sometimes inappropriate pleasantry; it’s the core of your self-expression as a Christian!

Really, will conservative Xtians *ever* get over their martyr complex?

Seeing that guy’s name makes me think of the character Butters from South Park.

How about we have a mass calling to Buttar’s office wishing them all a “Happy Holidays!”

Utah Senate President-elect Michael Waddoups said a resolution lacking the impact of law is really just a message being sent, but, he added, “Sometimes you have to send a message.”

And what exactly is that message? “Nice store you’ve got there. Wouldn’t want any new zoning or fire-safety laws to come around and ruin it” is the only message I can discern. I haven’t been to church in decades, but I don’t remember the bit about the Shaking-Down of the Temple.

I love that it’s a MORMON who came up with this. A religion widely believed to be a phony cult.

No irony there.

Happy Holidays has been the standard for as long as I remember, so at least 25 years.  What is the matter with these people?  Get. A. Life.

His delusions of what a state senator from a lightly-populated salt flat can do nationally reminds me of this jailhouse conversation:

Hans Moleman: Are you really allowed to execute people in a local jail?
Rev. Lovejoy: From this point on, no talking.

Tommy/Bathrobe: Eccomi!

There’s a pattern here: The same people who think that their marriages are threatened if some other people are allowed to get married also think that their holiday is threatened if some other people’s holidays are acknowledged.

“Season’s Greetings” and “Happy Holidays” have been expressions for this time of year since literally as long as I can remember. In fact, I’ll bet that’s been the case as long as Buttars can remember.

It’s as good a demonstration of the utter, slack-jawed mental vacuity of the religious Right as you’re likely to see: O’Reilly or Limbaugh or some asshole from their church/ward/what-have-you tells them that innocuous, obviously friendly expressions they’ve been hearing their whole lives are now fighting words—and they buy it.

(And here is a musical depiction of this mindset.) (mp3, NSFW)

And this, friends, is yet another reason why stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to have jobs.

This atheist celebrates Christmas because it’s a pagan holiday as well as a damned good time. 

If those uptight christians hadn’t usurped it we’d still be putting up lights on evergreen trees, eating special foods, staying up late, giving each - oh, we are still doing those things.  Go figure.

These guys are pretty insecure, eh?

It is my sincerest Christmastime wish that Mr. Butter’s law is enacted and enforced nationwide and that Navy Seals are put behind every cashier in the country, ready to slice their throats from ear to ear if they don’t wish the Baby J*sus Happy Birthday with every sale.  It may take a few examples to get the point across, but stringent enforcement may be required to bring law and order back to this Christian nation of ours, to keep it from becoming a Muslin Caliphate.

Everyone knows it’s Buttars—it’s STUPID!

thought you’d all like this one: Proposition 8, The Musical
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c0cf508ff8/prop-8-the-musical-starring-jack-black-john-c-reilly-and-many-more-from-fod-team-jack-black-craig-robinson-john-c-reilly-and-rashida-jones

Looks like folks have already taken the South Park jokes, so I’ll have to take the even lower road and rename the venerable senator Butt-arse.

Heil Christmas!

Seeing that guy’s name makes me think of the character Butters from South Park.

I tend to read it as “Butt-arse”, myself, which is both appropriate and makes me snicker like a twelve year old.

Senator . . . Nutter Butters?

As a Utah resident and practicing Wiccan (guess that makes me unamerican), I just want to say what many, many residents of Utah say when we hear this sort of crap over and over.

Shut up, Butters.

(BTW, he won the ‘boner of the day’ award on one of our local morning shows for this particular bit of innanity. He, um, wins that award a -lot- around here.)

I did a little checking, and as I thought, this fine, upstanding citizen-legislator is a proud member of the LDS Church, a returned missionary in fact.  As such, I wonder why he’s making such a fuss about American being a “Christian nation” when his own church is considered heretical by the very members of the Religious Right who came up with the War on Christmas in the first place?

There’s a sucker born every minute, Ellid….