Friday, December 10, 2010

'Tis the Season

The "War on Christmas" is one evangelical cause that I thankfully never fully bought into. The way the religious right carries on about the alleged conspiracy to remove Christ from Christmas with so much anger and hostility is so antithetical to the spirit of the event they're supposedly defending that it seems at times like they're the ones that have declared war on Christmas.

Along those lines, here are two perspectives on the "war," one from another evangelical and one from an atheist, that demonstrate just how counterproductive the whole brouhaha is.

One additional observation I would add to the mix is that this crusade, like virtually everything initiated by fundamentalists, is fueled by an emotion that's very much out of sync with the message of Christ's birth: fear. Fear of a brittle, easily offended god who plans to endlessly torture the vast majority of the human beings he created, a god who won't hesitate to destroy entire nations for any one of a long list of offenses.

Given such a mindset, it's little wonder that a season conceived as a celebration of joy could devolve into an angry shouting match. Thankfully the majority of Christians don't seem to be buying into that message of fear anymore. Unfortunately far too many still do.

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