A Classic Battle Between the Elites and the Masses

About Bill Donohue:

Bill Donohue is the president and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization. The publisher of the Catholic League journal, Catalyst, Donohue is also an adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation and served for two decades on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars.

The United States is more Christian than India is Hindu or Israel is Jewish. Furthermore, 8 in 10 Americans are Christian and all but 4 percent celebrate Christmas. So who are the anti-Christmas police protecting when they seek to smash Christmas? Themselves, obviously, because hardly anyone else agrees with them. Make no mistake about it, this is a classic battle between the elites—in this case anti-Christian activists—and the masses.

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The ACLU led the charge in the 1980s by suing municipalities over the display of nativity scenes on public property. But over the past two decades, the anti-Christmas elites have gone way beyond the legal strategy: They jumped on the multicultural bandwagon by trying to neuter Christmas in the schools, malls, and the workplace. Here's how it works.

Having gotten about as far as they can by swinging their legal club, the secular dogmatists switched gears by seeking to blunt Christmas celebrations with contrived competition. So now we are told that December is "Diversity Month," a time when we must recognize the multiplicity of races, ethnic groups, religions, and cultures around the world. It's as political as it is pathetic.

Imagine if the schools decided to turn February into "Diversity Month" by celebrating all ethnic groups. How would that effect "Black History Month"? By effectively neutering it. But the sensitivity police are not interested in targeting African-Americans—their real goal is targeting Christians.

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The commercialization of Christmas is unavoidable: Gift giving is very much at the heart of celebrating Christmas, and merchants can hardly be blamed for taking advantage. In a market economy, giving people what they want is the way it works. But secularizing Christmas by waging war on its religious roots is clearly avoidable—all it takes is respect for our Judeo-Christian heritage, the very font of our liberties.

It needs to be said that the anti-Christmas fundamentalists are pushing a pernicious agenda. Their goal is not to celebrate atheism, for there is nothing to celebrate. No, what they want to do is to deny Christians the right to celebrate Christmas without discord. Lucky for them most Christians embody the virtue of tolerance, a property that is positively foreign to them.

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holidays,

religion,

Christianity