I am not temperamentally a shopper. On Wednesday I made my annual trip to a Mall, visiting one belonging to Taubman Centers, a company founded by one of America’s more colorful entrepreneurs, Alfred A. Taubman, and still managed by his son.

It was a dreary experience. Partly because of the desperate signs in the store fronts offering huge discounts, and partly because of all the intrusive Spanish language notices.

But there was more…something else.

Then it dawned on me…absolutely no Christmas acknowledgement. The piped music was meaningless, and the intersections of the Mall corridors unadorned and unappealing.

If you only go to an environment rarely, you notice things more easily.

Amazing – especially if you are trying to attract Christmas shoppers. Surely it is not unreasonable to feel if one is going through the ghastly experience of dealing with a Christmas gift list, some reminder of the pleasanter aspect of the season should be heard? Particularly if one belongs to the majority of shoppers, who also are the majority of the Nation, and whose Creed and cultural tradition was that which founded and developed America?

The Washington Times has a good story on Focus on the Family’s very promising Stand for Christmas website: Retailers judged naughty or nice on Christmas theme by Valerie Richardson Thursday December 24, 2009.

DENVER | The Gap is naughty, Target is nice, and Dick’s Sporting Goods is a little of both, according to preliminary results of Focus on the Family’s annual Stand for Christmas project, which invites shoppers to evaluate retailers based on their Christmas-friendliness.
Now in its third year, the Stand for Christmas Web site asks customers to rate stores and provide online evaluations based on how readily they embrace the word “Christmas” and its themes. The scores are updated continuously on the standforchristmas.com Web site.

This is a brilliant idea, and we should have endorsed/publicized it earlier. (Purely a matter of time/resources.) This could be another way Americans could break the MSM censorship in this issue.

Next year, I hope Focus on the Family adds a Mall rating site. Technically, it would not be particularly burdensome. And while oligopolistic store chains as a practical matter limit how much choice shoppers really have, they can also choose Malls. I could just as well have gone to another equidistant one.

Ask Focus on the Family. Complain to Taubman.

Merry Christmas, from the Front.

PC

Yesterday I noted that

This year a remarkable numbers of exiles on the hardscrabble fringes of the MSM seem to be trying (rather pathetically) to advertise they are too! real journalists by writing utterly fact-deprived and essentially dishonest articles denying that there is a War Against Christmas – for instance here and here. It seems to be (so to speak) a catechism.

I did not cite a particularly fine example, the elegantly-headlined War on Christmas My Ass by Will Moredock Charleston City Paper Dec 19, 2009

It looks like this ridiculous media-driven “war on Christmas”crap has finally run its course.

This essay simply scalps the anti-Christmas Christopher Beame Slate article I discussed on Sunday and the Time piece Tom Piatak dissects in our leading article today.

Happily, Moredock has immediately been shown up as the boorish fool he undoubtedly is by an event on his own doorstep:

Charleston Fire Department Forced To Remove Nativity Display WJBF-TV Dec 22 2009

Charleston, SC—Firefighters are forced to pull the plug on a Christmas Nativity scene, one that they’ve displayed for years…after a local man filed a complaint with the Wisconsin based Freedom From Religion Foundation.

(Congratulate Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker, Co-Presidents of Freedom From Religion)

As it happens, this effort at repression was only partially successful. Nativity scene returns to fire station - with extras The (Charleston) Post and Courier - By Adam Parker Dec 23 2009 reports

The Nativity scene at Charleston Fire Station 12, which was removed last week after the city received a written complaint from a national First Amendment watchdog organization, was restored Tuesday once city officials decided to enhance the display with other holiday decorations.

…the City and Fire Department determined that to make sure the holiday decorations are in compliance with the laws, the Fire Department is adding decorations to the Nativity scene to include a Jewish Chanukah Menorah, Kwanzaa Kinara, Santa Claus, elves and reindeer,” department officials announced in a news release

The article reports Freedom From Religion’s

staff attorney, Rebecca S. Kratz, said the modified display probably is OK. “In terms of the Nativity,” she said, “if you muddy it up with secular decorations, federal courts have deemed it permissible.”

“If you muddy it up”…wonderful.

While the citizens of Charleston are to be congratulated on their response, the fact remains, as in the Chambersburg case, that an aggressive minority have succeeded in spoiling a display which for years was tolerated by all and obviously loved by many Charlestonians.

Tell Will Moredock to wake up and face the facts about the War Against Christmas.

H/T PF

Sunday afternoon, December 20, 2009, I attended a performance of Handel’s Messiah at the First Presbyterian Church here in Bozeman. It was a “sing-along” opportunity, except that the minister who opened the program let us know that the soloists weren’t keen on having us sing along with them!

Although I’m an atheist, the Messiah has always moved me. This time, even if I were a competent vocalist, I couldn’t have managed to croak out anything useful, as I was too often in tears when the choir was performing — the sound, the lyrics, and my fragmentary thoughts about the traditions of Western civilization combining to overwhelm me.

Nonetheless, there were two disappointments. As it turned out, this was only a partial Messiah. It concluded, sure enough, with all of us on our feet belting out the grand “Hallelujah!” chorus, the canonical climax. But missing was the earlier number “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, …,” which have always been the highlight words to conjure with for me. (By the way, when you can simply click a link like that and, for example, hear the trumpet sounding, you should, at least occasionally, think of and thank “Western civilization.”)

The other disappointment was on the back of the folded, four-page program where it says “Happy Holidays from First Presbyterian Church!”

Astonishing. It’s a Christian church, the program is the Messiah, the season is Christmas, and they’re such geldings that they wish their attendees (none of us forced to be there) “Happy Holidays”?!?

I continue to think that the volume of War Against/On Christmas items thrown up by the Google news search engine is heavier than last year.

Not from the MSM of course. There the subject is been declared taboo. And even in the local press factual items are more commonly found in the letters and comment threads – for instance this letter in the Muncie, Indiana Star Press published today:

Last year I counted four songs that even referenced Christ at the Muncie schools’ annual Christmas sing. This year it was less than that. But sadly, many won’t take the time to notice. Growing up in Muncie, I can remember when this city contributed to the spirit and celebration of Christ and Christmas, from the annual Christmas displays to former Mayor Jim Carey speaking as mayor on Christmas. I have not heard our current mayor say a word about Christmas publicly in a prayer for any event.

(There is, of course, also nothing in The National Review, where the War Against Christmas competition was started by Peter Brimelow some 15 years ago. They formally fled the field in 2006. In fact this year there seems to have been a further cut-back on Christmas references generally – something of a reversion to the early years of this decade. No doubt having Obama on the hook in Afghanistan, the controlling NeoCon faction feels it can stint on paying the Christian levies.)

The provincial press is running a number of “On the one hand/On the other hand/On the third hand” pieces which could be generously interpreted as acknowledging and protesting (very timidly) against the repression of Christmas. An example from Colorado Springs is OUR VIEW: A perfect time for ‘Merry Christmas’ Wayne Laugesen, editorial page editor, for the editorial board The Gazette December 19,2009

By saying “Merry Christmas,” one is thoughtful and inclusive, wishing cheer to anyone stable enough to accept kind words…Those who consider “Happy Holidays” an affront to Christians may need help. Likewise, for non-Christians who take “Merry Christmas” as an affront. To react negatively to a Christmas wish is to insult Christians…

(VDARE.com readers might like to participate in the vote about “saying “Merry Christmas” to strangers” at the lower right of this editorial.)

So far the most ingenious stratagem Anti-Christmas forces have produced this year is to publicize outfits like the Advent Conspiracy, effectively telling Christmas supporters that unless they observe the festival in an extreme and ascetic way, their objections are somehow illegitimate. A leader in this ploy has been Peace on Earth in Our Time By Christopher Beam Slate Dec 17, 2009.

Of course this assertion is extremely intrusive and objectionable. Who would suggest to Jews that only if they observe the High Holy Days in the manner of the Hasidim may they have the event at all?

The Beam article, while irritatingly gloating over the fruits of eliminating MSM discussion of Christmas repression, does have some useful information - for instance noting Focus on the Family’s enterprising store-rating StandForChristmas.com.

But this effort to dictate to the friends of Christmas how they should observe the occasion must be forthrightly rejected. The Christmas season is a broad cultural, social and (dare one say?) ethnic event. Details differ. There have always been Christian leaders complaining about this. But when they join in the repression efforts, whatever their motives, how different are they from the famed Kapos of the Concentration Camps?

If Peter Brimelow dodges the snow driving home this afternoon, he plans to start writing the VDARE.com War Against Christmas essay. So this is a good time to consider the intellectually dishonest shell game tactics to which the War Against Christmas Deniers have resorted.

A good example appeared today in the Chambersburg Pennsylvania Patriot News:
ACLU wish isn’t to start a ‘War on Christmas’ by Joshua Etterman Dec 19 2009

The point of this gloating piece is that the eviction of a Nativity scene from its traditional location in the center of town square of Chambersburg was not directly due to action by the ACLU but because of threats by a bunch of aggressive wierdos called PA Nonbelievers (Thank them here).

But behind them was the threat of litigation by the ACLU, as Etterman smugly notes

The borough’s decision to prohibit all religious displays following a request from the atheist PA Non-Believers group was done without any influence or involvement from the ACLU

Of course, to say that the ACLU played no role in the decision would be unfair. Had the Borough Council refused the nonbelievers’ request, the ACLU might have become involved, but only as a last resort

(e.g. if their allies did not win). Nevertheless, Etterman has no scruples in asserting:

As Christmas approaches… once again the right wing begins its babbling about the much-fabled “War on Christmas.” And, as usual, the ACLU is in the crosshairs.

Thanks to the delights of Google map it is possible to see that Etterman may not even be telling the truth in saying the scene’s relocation to Central Presbyterian Church means it is still on the Square. The church appears to be down a side street.

And as it happens, a brief search shows the ACLU has been directly involved in at least two other Nativity scene repressions this year, one elsewhere in Pennsylvania. See
ACLU Axes Christmas Mark Hiller WBRE December 18 2009

The grounds of Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County Courthouse are no longer home to a nativity scene or menorah.
The county decided to remove the displays under the threat of legal action.

and

ACLU takes issue with Christmas on the cumberland display By Jake Lowary The Leaf-Chronicle November 21 2009

The American Civil Liberties Union on Nov. 11. sent at letter to the City Attorney Lance Baker telling him of the issues the group has with its Christmas on the Cumberland display, particularly a nativity scene sponsored by Grace Church of the Nazarene.

In the letter written by ACLU Staff Attorney Tricia Herzfeld, the ACLU claims…”the City’s annual ‘Christmas on the Cumberland’ celebration is constitutionally suspect and such practice should be remedied.”

Furthermore, of course, the VDARE.com Christmas Competition archive provides comprehensive proof that the ACLU has been up to its neck in Christmas repression for years. See here (and please support VDARE.com is keeping this resource updated!) Etterman says he has been a member of the ACLU for a decade: he must know this.

Ultimately, whether the ACLU itself directly destroyed the Chambersburg display, or whether an ally did it, the fact remains the same: for (probably) generations the people of Chambersburg had a crèche in the center of their town square. Now they don’t.

Is this what they wanted?

Christmas War Deniers can deny the facts and quibble about details all season: but the War is real – and must be fought.

VDARE.com Facebook account holders should tell Josh Etterman to be honest.

It starts with the ACLU not challenging a nativity display in Springfield, Illinois, a situation that Ann Coulter describes on her website like this:

December 16, 2009, 7:23 PM Nativity Scene in Illinois State Capitol Rotunda! -

Dateline: Springfield, Ill. This week, the state of Illinois mounted in its capitol rotunda the most inclusive holiday display ever, with a nativity scene for Christians, a menorah for Orthodox Jews and an ACLU poster for Reform Jews.

Here’s Ann on O’ Reilly:

Peter Brimelow will discuss The War Against Christmas tomorrow morning at 9:06 a.m. ET on The Barry Foster Show. The program airs in Seebring, FL on 730 AM WWTK. No streaming is available but locals are encouraged to listen/call in.

While some Hispanics support a boycott of the upcoming Census count, others want every illegal adult, teen and anchor baby toted up for the future billions of dollars in social services those numbers will attract from the spendo-goverrnment.

As it happens, Mexicans in particular are fixated in December on the image of Mary and Joseph searching unsuccessfully for a place to spend the night. They think that they, as illegal aliens, are similar to the holy family, believing that the inconvenience of full-up hotels is somehow like the semi-unwelcome they receive in America. It’s another Mexican delusion, because Mary and Joseph were where they were supposed to be, unlike millions of Mexes.

Anyway, the image of the holy family has been further turned into another propaganda ploy because of an odd twist of illegal Mexican culture.

[Group's Census promo called 'blasphemous', USA Today, December 14, 2009]

A push to spread the gospel about the 2010 Census this Christmas is stoking controversy with a campaign that links the government count to events surrounding the birth of Jesus.

The National Association of Latino Elected Officials is leading the distribution to churches and clergy of thousands of posters that depict the arrival of Joseph and a pregnant Mary in Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago. As chronicled in the Gospel of Luke, Joseph returned to be counted in a Roman census, but he and Mary found no room at an inn, and Jesus was born in a manger.

“This is how Jesus was born,” the poster states. “Joseph and Mary participated in the Census.”

Most of the posters are in Spanish and target Latino evangelicals, says Jose Cruz, senior director of civic engagement at the Latino association, which launched its Ya Es Hora (It’s Time) campaign in 2006 to promote voter registration among Latinos.

It is promoting the Census, used to help allocate $400 billion a year in federal dollars, redraw state and local political districts and determine the number of seats each state gets in Congress.

Interestingly, at least one Hispanic thinks the campaign is off the reservation.

The Rev. Miguel Rivera, chairman of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, says invoking the name of Jesus to promote the 2010 Census is “blasphemous” and “violates the concept of separation of church and state.” Using the name of Jesus for “a political and secular intention, it is definitely an assault against our Christian faith,” Rivera says.

Despite the objections of one clergyman, it appears the campaign will go forward since money still comes first for immigrants, aliens and their supportive infrastructure.

This is in both the War On Christmas and immigration files.(Reuters has filed it under Oddly Enough.) The Lega Nord is the immigration restriction party in the North of Italy.

Black nativity angers Italy’s “White Xmas” party
Ella Ide
ROME
Mon Dec 14, 2009 1:03pm EST

ROME (Reuters) - A nativity scene featuring a dark-skinned Jesus, Mary and Joseph that has gone on display in a Verona courthouse has created heated debate in a city with strong links to Italy’s anti-immigration Northern League party.

The nativity’s appearance coincides with the League’s controversial operation “White Christmas,” a two-month sweep ending on Christmas Day to ferret out foreigners without proper permits in Coccaglio, a small League-led town east of Milan.

The Christmas scene — featuring a dark-skinned baby Jesus dressed in a red shirt and lying in a manger — was the idea of Mario Giulio Schinaia, the chief Public Prosecutor in Verona.

“History teaches us that baby Jesus and his parents were very probably dark-skinned,” Schinaia told Reuters. “This nativity belongs to a universal Christmas tradition that brings together the whole of Christianity in celebration.”

The nativity has caused heated reactions in the rich northern town, where resentment toward foreigners has spread as the number of immigrants, particularly from north Africa and eastern Europe, continues to rise.

“It is a useless act of provocation, just like the suggestion not to have a nativity scene at all, in order not to offend Muslims,” Northern League farm minister Luca Zaia told one paper, referring to proposals in recent years that town halls and stores should no longer sponsor Christmas scenes.

“Magistrates have other problems to deal with: I hope they spend as much time thinking about lawsuits and trials,” he said.

The Northern League, an ally of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with key cabinet posts including the interior ministry, has used its growing political clout to secure tough new laws including making illegal immigration a crime.

League proposals have ranged from separate buses and trains for immigrants to banning new mosques and forbidding the serving of Chinese food and kebabs in towns under its control.

Schinaia defended his black nativity scene, saying it was not intended to be polemical but to encourage debate.

“There shouldn’t be a white or black Christmas, only a merry Christmas for everyone, of every skin color, ethnic background and nationality.”

(Reporting by Ella Ide; Editing by Stephen Brown)

Although it is still early in the Season, my impression is that this is going to be a bumper Christmas for War against/on Christmas action. The traffic generated by Google News alerts for both phrases seems heavy.

And both sides seem to be getting more serious. Maybe the passage of time has made them realize how important the matter really is.

Bob Livingston’s Personal Liberty Digest has a fine essay The War on Christmas by Chip Wood (Dec 11 2009). Noting

the battle against public display of anything religious claimed another victim, this time in Washington, D.C. The new visitor’s center at the United States Capitol contains a replica of the Speaker’s rostrum in the House chamber. It’s an exact copy, except for this change: The actual chair has the words “In God We Trust” engraved across the top. The phrase is missing from the copy

Wood goes on to develop a root-and branch argument about the process by which Christmas has been driven from the public square:

Baloney. The Constitution requires no such thing.

Denouncing the Supreme Court’s power grab, he writes:

Wood argues:

The implication here of course is that properly-constituted and motivated legislatures could be the ultimate resort of a citizenry outraged at the repression of the appropriate observance of the traditions it venerates.

This of course would infuriate Marilyn Henry, writing a column in The Jerusalem Post: Metro Views: A war on Christmas?: Dec 12 2009

Complaining

she writes a celebration of the eradication of Christmas acknowledgement in American public schools, recently upheld by anti-Christmas U.S. Third District of Appeals in rejecting a suit by the valiant Thomas More Law Center. (See the Center’s comment: A Christmas Insult to Christians —Third Circuit Approves School’s Ban on “Silent Night”, November 25, 2009 ).

Henry – despite the Irish sound of her name the wife of a New Jersey Rabbi - happily notes the Court paused to gloat that it was, in effect, legislating a change:

More importantly, she names her view of the stakes:

We would? Is repressing Christmas necessary to show appropriate politeness to American Jews?

Is that really a wise way to frame this debate?

In Israel, apparently, repressing Christmas is indeed what respect for Jews requires:

Jewish lobby wages war on Christmas trees Ari Galhar Ynetnews.com 12.08.09

But is America a province of Israel?