Which Side Of the Christmas Wars Are You On This Year?

The Christmas Wars 2009: Round 1
" By Stephanie Mencimer | Tue October 13, 2009 7:18 AM PST

The Christmas wars are officially off and running. The latest attack comes from the American Family Association, a Mississippi-based right-wing Christian group that has successfully boycotted various companies they deem too friendly to gays and too hostile to Christians. The newest target of its ire? The Gap, a company that has officially declined to use the word "Christmas" in any of its holiday promotions this year. The AFA apparently thinks this is real blasphemy and is urging its members and supporters to boycott The Gap and its affiliates, Banana Republic and Old Navy. They write:

We want you to stand with us and other Christians in proclaiming that Christmas is special, not just any winter holiday. And the gift buying that Americans do for one another is because of Christmas. People don't exchange gifts on Thanksgiving or New Year's Day.

As part of its campaign, AFA is urging its supporters to don buttons that read "God's Gift: Merry Christmas" to show their support for Christmas. Naturally, the buttons can be procured from AFA. A "suggested donation" of $55 will get you 100 of them. However futile such campaigns may seem, the tiny AFA has actually been fairly successful in many of these boycotts. Three years ago, the group successfully convinced Sears to back off its commitment to nondenominational advertising. This year, Sears is going whole hog on the birth of Christ. AFA notes approvingly on its website that Sears is even offering a "Christmas Club." AFA doesn't seem to mind that Sears has launched the club even before Halloween. Those sorts of complaints will apparently be left to the atheists.

The War on the War on Christmas Kicks Off With Biggest Logical Leap of the Year
" By Jonathan Stein | Fri November 21, 2008 7:13 AM PST

It's that time of year again. From now until December 26, expect over-the-top proclamations from your favorite conservative hacks about how our inability to say the words "Merry Christmas" is a sign of this country's imminent downfall. And it's not just our culture that suffers because of our overzealous political correctness, says Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger. In the most absurd (and least substantiated) logical leap of the year, he claims our economy is being destroyed as well.

"And so it will come to pass once again that many people will spend four weeks biting on tongues lest they say "Merry Christmas" and perchance, give offense. Christmas, the holiday that dare not speak its name.

"This year we celebrate the desacralized "holidays" amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin " fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy."

Yup. It has nothing to do with the government's financial overseers being asleep at the switch, or a decades-long conservative push for deregulation, or even the greed of lenders who gave out bad loans in order to make millions and Wall Street types who created financial instruments they could not understand in order to make billions. Nope. The stock market is tumbling, unemployment is growing, and people across America are feeling the pinch at their kitchen tables because your local Target has a "Happy Holidays" banner out front.

You aren't getting away with it any longer, Target. Daniel Henninger has exposed your scam. Angry mobs are coming to your locations to scrawl "Merry Christmas" over your "desacralized" signs, and then everyone will feel better and start buying TiVos and the economy will be great again.