Some of this story will be old news to VDARE.com readers–Tom Piatak wrote about it in 2001. Today’s Daily Telegraph writes

How Hitler and the Nazis tried to steal Christmas
The Nazi Party tried their best to remove Christ from Christmas by paganising carols, producing glittering swastika, iron cross and toy grenade baubles for the fir tree, research for a new exhibition has found.

Published: 8:53AM GMT 17 Nov 2009
Many of the changes made under Hitler, put in place to remove the influence of the Jewish-born baby Jesus, are still in use today, much to the alarm of modern Germans.

The swastika-shaped baking trays and wrapping paper adorned with Nazi symbols have long gone, but traces of the Third Reich Christmas can still be found in the subtly rewritten lyrics of favourite carols.

The discoveries have been highlighted by a new exhibition at the National Socialism Documentation Centre in Cologne.

“I always thought that Unto Us a Time Has Come was a song about wandering through winter snow,” said Heidi Bertelson, 42, a lawyer who visited the exhibit told Times. “I didn’t realise that Christ had been excised.”

In 2001, Piatak quoted Father Gereon Goldmann’s autobiography, The Shadow Of His Wings:

As a conscript in the SS, Goldmann was forced to celebrate not Christmas, but a bizarre winter holiday concocted by the Nazis:

“On Christmas Eve, there was a celebration, not a Christian one, but a pagan German Julfest. We were all together and had to sing some trash about the night of the clear stars and other sad substitutes for the true Christmas message.”

As shocking as it may sound, the contemporary public observance of Christmas in America bears a much closer resemblance to the Nazis’ Julfest than to the Christmas that enticed [Whittaker] Chambers. And this extraordinary transformation has occurred in a generation.[More]

And it’s starting again this year–see the Catholic League’s latest list: WAR ON CHRISTMAS COMMENCES November 3, 2009.

UPDATE: Check out the Google News on “War Against Christmas” and “War On Christmas.”

A lot of it is “War On Christmas Denial”–no such thing is happening, they say, they say.

From the Washington Post:

Sniper John Allen Muhammad is executed
10 died in Oct. 2002 rampage; motivation remains unclear

I think this is slightly bizarre, although not necessarily inappropriate:

Visiting Mexican teacher celebrates Day of the Dead

By Abigail Curtis
Bangor Daily News, October 31, 2009

BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY ABIGAIL CURTIS Leanna Cotton, 6, and her mom, Brenda Cotton, both of Thomaston, show off the sugar skulls they made to honor loved ones. “Mine is for my old dog Gretta,” Leanna said. Buy Photo

ROCKLAND, Maine — When Francisco Rosa was growing up in the Pacific state of Colima in Mexico, he and his family would pack a festive picnic lunch every year on Nov. 2 and head to a special place: the cemetery.

There, they would eat holiday treats such as sugar skulls and pan de los muertos — bread of the dead — as they celebrated the memory of loved ones who had passed away. [More]

The reason I say it’s not totally inappropriate is that the Penobscot School in Rockland Maine is not a public school, but a private institution which describes itself as a “A Center for Language Learning and International Cultural Exchange.” As such, it is appropriate for it to engage in promoting weird foreign religious practices. However, if they try to introduce this kind of thing to your local public school, you can remind them that Day of the Dead is just the Mexican version of  the Feast Of All Saints, and as such should be treated just like…Winterfest.

We can always find bad news to write about at VDARE.COM, so here’s some good news: Victoria’s Secret, which sells, well, everyone knows about Victoria’s Secret, has just come out with a CHRISTMAS 2009 CATALOG! With “CHRISTMAS 2009″ RIGHT ON THE FRONT COVER! (Inspect here).

Not only that, but the model on the cover has BLUE EYES and BLONDE HAIR! Isn’t that a Hate Crime, now that Obama has indeed signed the Matthew Shepard Free Speech Suppression Act?

Thank Victoria’s Secret. Seriously–the Christophobe crazies will be complaining.

From Nature, October 8, 2009:

Let’s celebrate human genetic diversity

Science is finding evidence of genetic diversity among groups of people as well as among individuals. This discovery should be embraced, not feared, say Bruce T. Lahn and Lanny Ebenstein.

A growing body of data is revealing the nature of human genetic diversity at increasingly finer resolution. It is now recognized that despite the high degree of genetic similarities that bind humanity together as a species, considerable diversity exists at both individual and group levels (see box, page 728). The biological significance of these variations remains to be explored fully. But enough evidence has come to the fore to warrant the question: what if scientific data ultimately demonstrate that genetically based biological variation exists at non-trivial levels not only among individuals but also among groups? In our view, the scientific community and society at large are ill-prepared for such a possibility. We need a moral response to this question that is robust irrespective of what research uncovers about human diversity. Here, we argue for the moral position that genetic diversity, from within or among groups, should be embraced and celebrated as one of humanity’s chief assets.

The current moral position is a sort of ‘biological egalitarianism’. This dominant position emerged in recent decades largely to correct grave historical injustices, including genocide that were committed with the support of pseudo scientific understandings of group diversity. The racial-hygiene theory promoted by German geneticists Fritz Lenz, Eugene Fischer and others during the Nazi era is one notorious example of such pseudoscience. Biological egalitarianism is the view that no or almost no meaningful genetically based biological differences exist among human groups, with the exception of a few superficial traits such as skin colour. Proponents of this view seem to hope that, by promoting biological sameness, discrimination against groups or individuals will become groundless.

We believe that this position, although well intentioned, is illogical and even dangerous, as it implies that if significant group diversity were established, discrimination might thereby be justified. We reject this position. Equality of opportunity and respect for human dignity should be humankind’s common aspirations, notwithstanding human differences no matter how big or small. We also think that biological egalitarianism may not remain viable in light of the growing body of empirical data.

(more…)

In retrospect it’s clear that the backlash against the War Against Christmas, entirely grass-roots and spontaneous, was a precursor of this year’s Tea Parties and Town Hall uprisings, stunning the Establishment Left, but almost equally discomforting to Establishment Right, notwithstanding the fact that it stands to benefit.

I expect a thoroughly good time in 2009, given the Obama Administration’s painfully shallow roots in America’s historic Christian majority. Roger Chaillet, winner of our 2003 War Against Christmas Competition, has just submitted an early entry for the 2009 Competition: Curriculum plan would remove mention of Christmas: Conservatives decry proposal for 6th-grade lesson, by April Castro, AP, September 11 2009.

AUSTIN — A proposal for new social studies curriculum in Texas public schools removes a mention of Christmas in a sixth-grade lesson, replacing it with a Hindu religious festival, a change that’s riled conservatives who say it’s another battle in the “war” against the Christian holiday…

The standards currently instruct sixth-grade students to be able to explain the significance of religious holidays such as the Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and the Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. The proposal, which is set to be debated during a hearing next week, removes the words Christmas and Rosh Hashanah. Diwali, a Hindu festival, is added.

In a note explaining the change, members of a review committee wrote “the examples include the key holiday from each of the five major religions.”

The change was protested by the Texas-based Free Market Foundation. Naturally, AP’s Castro gave one of the state’s Christophobes the last word:

“This is just a cynical attempt to use religion as a weapon to mislead the public and divide Texans over something as important as our children’s education,” said Kathy Miller, president of the watchdog group Texas Freedom Network, which opposes initiatives pushed by Christian conservatives. “If I were their teacher I would send the Free Market Foundation to detention.”

(VDARE.COM link)

“Detention”, eh? Of course, I’m sure Miller would claim this is just rhetoric. But you aren’t allowed anymore to say “kill the ump” (or the president) because of recent history. And as it happens there is now a recent history of individuals in common-law jurisdictions being sent to prison for “hate speech” — something that would have been dismissed as unthinkably Orwellian fifty years ago–and vigorous effort by Miller’s fellow-leftists to import this power here.

Does Miller want to make Christmas a hate crime? Ask her. Be polite!

Republican staffers on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (Darrell Issa (CA-49), Ranking Member) have penned a lengthy report on The Role of Government Affordable Housing Policy in Creating the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Despite the inevitable partisan tendentiousness — no mention of George W. Bush’s White House Conference on Increasing Minority Homeownership, too much blame on Fannie and Freddie, not enough blame on businesses and deregulation — it turns out to be better than you’d expect. Here’s the first paragraph:

The housing bubble that burst in 2007 and led to a financial crisis can be traced back to federal government intervention in the U.S. housing market intended to help provide homeownership opportunities for more Americans. This intervention began with two government-backed corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which privatized their profits but socialized their risks, creating powerful incentives for them to act recklessly and exposing taxpayers to tremendous losses. Government intervention also created “affordable” but dangerous lending policies which encouraged lower down payments, looser underwriting standards and higher leverage. Finally, government intervention created a nexus of vested interests – politicians, lenders and lobbyists – who profited from the “affordable” housing market and acted to kill reforms. In the short run, this government intervention was successful in its stated goal – raising the national homeownership rate. However, the ultimate effect was to create a mortgage tsunami that wrought devastation on the American people and economy. While government intervention was not the sole cause of the financial crisis, its role was significant and has received too little attention.

This report resembles a better documented, better informed but more coy version of my June 2008 Taki article The Diversity Recession. It underplays how much the politicians were pushing on an open door among lenders, more than a few of whom thought handing out zero down liar loans was a great moneymaking idea. Some highlights: (more…)

Now that the Feast Of The Epiphany is past, the Christmas Competition may be considered closed. (But feel free to email us with any new horror stories, anyway, they’re fun to read.) Peter Brimelow will be writing a post-Christmas roundup shortly. Check out some the Christmas cheer from 2008 below.

WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS COMPETITION 2008: [blog] [I] [II] [III] [IV] [V] [VI][VII][VIII][IX][X][XI][XII]

We recently had a typically learned VDARE.COM discussion about the “Russian Germans”, a distict ethnic group in some Western states. (See here and here).

It inspired me to retrieve and post a column I wrote for the London Times back in 1990, about my experience with Russian Germans in Winnipeg, and about a book, Nina’s Journey: A Memoir of Stalin’s Russia and the Second World War, by Nina Markovna, an ethnic German from the Crimea.

Markovna’s story is interesting for a number of reasons, but I had completely forgotten writing this paragraph:

One point that emerges quickly is the sheer scale and nightmare intensity of Stalin’s purges. One of Markovna’s childhood memories is of inadvertently betraying her mother to a night of NKVD interrogation by remarking to a teacher that sugar was common before the Revolution. Another is of watching her mother and her aunt agreeing instantly to part forever after her uncle’s deportation and death, fearing that further contact would attract informers and doom their children. Her uncle’s crime: dressing a Christmas tree.

Emphasis added.

We’ve noted that this year’s Christophobe tactic is to smear resistance to The War Against Christmas as inspired by extremists, i.e. VDARE.COM. But it is the War Against Christmas itself that has long and disgusting roots.

And that makes War Against Christmas Deniers the spiritual, and sometime biological, descendants of Walter Duranty and the fellow-travelling American Left of the 1930s

If there’s one thing John McCain and the President-select now calling himself “Barack Hussein Obama” agree on, it’s the need to abolish the border and meld with Mexico, even though anyone explicitly stating the idea is hooted down as a “nativist,” “xenophobe,” booger-eater, etc.

As Brenda Walker wrote on Christmas Eve, illegal immigrant Mexicans in America have developed a Christmas celebration, “Las Posadas,” in which they pervert the story of Jesus’ birth, in order to serve invader propaganda.

On the other side of our increasingly virtual border, Mexicans have another sort of Christmas celebration. As preparation for what is to follow, keep in mind that Mexican drug smugglers have their own patron saint and an entire popular culture of song, that is, when the troubadours aren’t being murdered by Mexico’s “Really Tough Music Critics.”

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico — Eight bodies were found stuffed in plastic garbage bags and dumped on a rural road near the Guatemalan border in an area plagued by drug violence, authorities in southern Chiapas state said Tuesday.

The victims have yet to be identified, but police believe they may include Mexicans, Guatemalans or Colombians.

A state Justice Department official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said the bodies were discovered by a farmer. At least one had bruises and marks indicating he may have been tortured.

The bodies were found near the town of Tuxtla Chico, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of another border settlement where Mexican and Guatemalan drug traffickers engaged in a series of gunbattles that killed 17 people last month.

Brutal slayings by drug cartels are on the rise in Mexico, and officials estimate that more than 5,300 people have died in organized crime-related slayings this year.

On Sunday, the decapitated bodies of eight army soldiers were found along an urban boulevard in the southern state of Guerrero.

In a press statement on Tuesday, Mexico’s Defense Department slammed what it called “inappropriate and hurtful” comments on the soldiers’ deaths.

While the department did not specify what had offended it, one Mexican newspaper ran an editorial cartoon Tuesday titled “December Decorations” that showed the hand of a drug trafficker hanging severed heads with military-style haircuts on a Christmas tree as if they were ornaments.

[8 bodies found in plastic bags in southern Mexico, by Manuel de la Cruz, Houston Chronicle/Associated Press, December 24, 2008]

Christmas ornaments.

Excuse me, “December decorations.” (A War Against Christmas sighting below the Rio Grande: You don’t mess with narcoterrorists, but Christmas is a safe target.)

“Obama” and “McCain” both seek to satisfy The Nation Formerly Known as America’s dire need for more such vibrancy, family values, and devout Christianity.

I hope Manuel de la Cruz’ failure to suppress the Bad News of diversity doesn’t land him on the enemies’ list of the SPLC, which could result in his being targeted by its subscribers, country music scholar Max Blumenthal (also here), Herr Keith Olbermann, Alex Altman, et al.

Eight tips ‘o’ the headless hat to Blog of the Gods, and another eight to latté island, where I first came across these sad tidings.