My recent piece at The Pacific Standard.
Here is a taste:
The so-called “War on Christmas” has reared its ugly head again. Conservative Christians—most of them evangelicals—have hit the airwaves and lecture circuits to warn their followers about the supposed threat to the only event on the Christian calendar to have the status of a federal holiday.
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin visited Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, recently to promote her new book and alert undergraduates and other assorted culture warriors to the way “revisionists” are trying to turn December into a “winter solstice season.” She told her audience that “protecting the heart of Christmas” (the subtitle of her book) is “really about protecting the heart of America.”
Leave it to Palin to use this most sacred of Christian celebrations for political purposes by comparing its “message of hope and change” to the “stuff you hear coming out of Washington.”At the heart of Palin’s defense of Christmas is an understanding that the United States was founded as, and continues to be, a Christian nation. In her talk to Liberty students she connected the “War on Christmas” to a much larger assault on the country’s Judeo-Christian heritage as embedded in our history and founding documents, concluding that Christianity has made America an “exceptional” nation.
Read the rest here.
Leave it to Palin to use this most sacred of Christian celebrations for political purposes by comparing its “message of hope and change” to the “stuff you hear coming out of Washington.”
It's good to see you take your political leanings out from under wraps, John. As a faithful reader of yours, I notice that you reserve this level of contempt only for conservatives–and the “leave it to” formulation is definitely one of contempt. Similarly, on the propriety question, President Obama used his Thanksgiving address to put in a commercial for gay love.
http://www.christianpost.com/news/did-obama-allude-to-gay-relationships-in-his-thanksgiving-proclamation-109788/
It's all grist for the mill at the point. I'm not a fan of either of them for hijacking the holidays for their agendas, but we must at least note here that as our sitting president, Obama remains a 10 on the importance scale and as a failed VP candidate, Palin is about a 2.
Still, it's good that you're “coming out” [as it were] as a left-liberal as you transition from history professor to public intellectual. Truth in advertising.
Thanks, Tom. As usual, you have me pegged! 🙂
Well, I gotta go with Tom on this one. I enjoyed the article, but I think your shots at Palin may diminish the argument on anyone from the “war on Christmas” crowd who might run across this article.
I am planning to make a Facebook post on your article later today and I've got a number of folks, including family members, who are probably believers in the “war on Christmas”….I hesitate to post it only because I wonder if they'll just dismiss the article or never finish it once they run across the shots at Palin and tag it as another exmaple of the ramblings of a “leftist, revisionist history professor”. Your blog, your rules, of course, but the thing comes across as “preaching to the choir” instead of trying to make a valid historical point to those with whom you take issue on this topic.
I do have R McKenzie's “The First Thankgiving” on its way to me thanks to a reference in one of your previous posts. Thanks for that one.
Ed: Perhaps you are right. But it is hard to criticize the Christian Right's use of history without “taking shots” at the Christian Right's use of history. (In this case, Sarah Palin). But perhaps I was too harsh in my language. Thanks for pointing that out.
Blogger John Fea said…
Thanks, Tom. As usual, you have me pegged! 🙂
December 9, 2013 at 10:05 PM
Heh heh. BTW, Palin is actually borne out here–it seems our friends at the MRFF are doing their thing again. When they say jump, the Air Force jumps.
http://www.newsmax.com/US/Air-Force-removes-nativity-scene/2013/12/10/id/541053
Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina has removed a Nativity scene after a religious freedom group complained that it was unconstitutional.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation made a complaint to the Pentagon about the display and within hours the scene was being removed, according to the group.
“It was very sectarian in nature and a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution as well as a blatant violation of Air Force Instruction 1-1, section 2.11,” said Paul Loebe, MRFF's special projects manager, who praised the Air Force for “acting so swiftly to reverse this egregious violation.”
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told Fox News, “We see stories like this every day and yet left-wing pundits still claim that the so-called 'War on Christmas' is a figment of the imagination. The War on Christmas is just the top of the spear in a large battle to marginalize expressions of faith and make true religious freedom a thing of the past.”
“Never let these Scrooges strip away the true meaning of Christmas,” she added.
An expert on religious liberties said that it was the military's removal of the display — not its erection — that was the constitutional transgression.
“This was private speech,” Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for Liberty Institute, told Fox News. “The military can say no displays on a base but it cannot allow a display and then ban it simply because of its religious viewpoint.”
There's also another side to consider. As a result of the Great Awakening, the Baptists were much more influential at the time of the founding of our nation than the Puritans. The Baptists didn't have nearly as harsh of a view of Christmas as the Puritans. They just ignored it. The Baptist History and Heritage Society published an article on this topic a few years ago. It's available online at: http://www.baptisthistory.org/bhhs/bsb/bsb2010_12.html