T’IS the season to be jolly … stupid!
It seems to come earlier and earlier each year – this season in which loopy Christians declare with lumps in their throats, tears in their eyes and paranoia rampaging through their brains, that spiteful atheists are pulling all available levers to destroy the very essence of Christmas.
Banana Republic is hostile to Christmas, says Focus on the Family
Over at America’s Focus on the Family, where piety and outrage is ladled out daily in equal measure, they’re running a “Stand for Christmas” campaign aimed at naming and shaming well-known stores who don’t do this pagan festival to the satisfaction of fundies.
Right now Banana Republic is topping the list of the most “Christmas offensive” of retailers. The 81 percent “offensive” rating it has shamefully achieved is based on the experiences of christomaniacal customers who have found BN severely deficient in Christmas spirit.
They have deposited their outraged views here.
Here’s one sample comment:
Since you are only selling ‘Holiday Gifts’ and I only buy ‘Christmas Gifts’, there will be no need for me to shop in your store.
Says FotF:
Millions upon millions in our nation deeply value the great truths of Christmas and the holiday’s inspiring place in American life and culture. We hope you will take a moment to “Stand for Christmas” by sharing feedback about your Christmas shopping experiences. We’re asking YOU to decide which retailers are “Christmas-friendly.” They want your patronage and your gift-shopping dollars, but do they openly recognize Christmas?
Meanwhile, over in Blightly, the latest cleric to leap onto the “atheists-are-killing-Christmas” bandwagon is the Bishop of Ludlow, the Rt Rev Alistair Magowan (not to be confused with top British impressionist, comedian and actor, Alistair McGowan).
Bishop Magowan
He says many people are trying to keep the “tinsel and frills” but “throw out the baby”.
He pointed out that the biblical story of the birth of Jesus Christ does not fit with the “sentimentalised” images now used to mark the festive season.
Bishop Magowan is the third Church of England prelate in recent days to have criticised the way Christmas is celebrated in modern Britain, according to this report.
His comments come after the Rt Rev Humphrey Southern, Bishop of Repton, said that too many people try to “create a domestic cocoon” of happiness by shopping and putting up decorations, ignoring those facing war or poverty who might see the greeting “happy Christmas” as an insult.
Eh?
The Bishop of Croydon, the Rt Rev Nick Baines, wrote that the language used in some traditional carols risks turning the nativity into:
Just one more story alongside the panto and fairy stories.
In a letter sent to every parish in the diocese of Hereford this month, Bishop Magowan wrote:
There is a story of a church carol service where the misprinted first line of the carol read: Away with the Manger.
Sadly a growing lobby wants to do just that and silence the Christmas message … What I cannot quite understand is why people feel such a need unless there is something here they find uncomfortable or wish to silence. Nearly always it is those of no faith and not those of other faiths who shout.
He went on:
The Christmas story, given a moment’s thought, doesn’t fit the sentimentalised and often stereotyped images. It’s about God becoming one of us in order to transform us, coming down in order to lift us up. Here is God embracing poverty, accepting frailty, becoming a refugee, experiencing political repression and eventually dying a falsely accused criminal’s death. Into that darkness he brings light and a love that triumphs over evil. He offers us that new way of living …
How much dosh, I wonder, does the man earn to create such dreadful drivel?
Hat Tip: Dave T (for the the Magowan link)
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
December 7th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I don’t get these people. Has anybody told them they can’t call it “Christmas”? Has anyone told them they can’t celebrate Christmas? But on what basis do they insist everyone do so?
Hey, it’s no big deal to me. Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas….
Hope everybody has a merry one.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I just wish those xtian wankers would keep their hands off our festival (you know, the Western European one that pre-dates xtianity by many thousands of years).
ET OMNIBVS SATVRNALIAM FELIX VOLO!!!
December 7th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Humbug, humbug I say!
Presumably the Focus on the Family twerps are the same lot who put the “look at me I’m a chav flashing lights” on the outside of their houses.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Happy Yule.
December 7th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Hmm, given that evangelical nutters are the worst offenders when it comes to Leviticus on mixed fibres I can’t see anywhere upmarket of Walmart (and they’re fundies anyway, aren’t they?) losing custom because of this.
Also, funnily enough, my daughter actually did throw out the baby while starring in a nursery school nativity play a few years back – she got bored, chucked it over her shoulder at Joseph and went off to play with the toy donkey instead.
I love nativity plays – kids with tea-towels on their heads and cotton wool beards fidgetting, fighting and misquoting a script that makes no sense to them, donkeys piddling on the school stage……..great custom, shame about the religious bollocks!
December 7th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
If its not too early, Happy Yuletide Barry and all those who leave such amusing, pungent comments. At least the Winter Solstice is a real demonstrable event!
December 7th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Stuart H.
“…kids with tea-towels on their heads…fighting and misquoting a script that makes no sense to them…”
I think you have just summed up monotheism!
December 7th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
A question, should atheistic parents tell their children that Santa exists; could inducing a child to believe in the literal truth of fairy tales not soften them up for when their school starts to tell them about Jesus?
Sorry for being a killjoy
December 7th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
I don’t know if anyone has remarked on this before but apparently the Catholic Church has it’s own version of “al-Taqiyya”.
Church ‘lied without lying’
“mental reservation is a concept developed and much discussed over the centuries, which permits a church man knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying”.
December 7th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
What is the problem with these people? Why can’t they just celebrate Christmas in their own way, without pretending that I am trying to stop them, and leave me alone to celebrate it in my way?
I would say that to some extent, popular understanding of the meaning of Christmas as Christians would see it is in the decline. But then I would also say that the pre-Christian origins of the midwinter celebrations are not that widely known outside of freethinker circles either.
December 7th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I notice that god did not take the final and what would have been the most effective decision and become FEMALE a step too far perhaps?
December 7th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Good point Rog, parents are to some degree culpable, they tell their children about the tooth fairy, santa and fairy tales in general so some of that stuff must stick and make the children more receptive to religious nonsense.
December 7th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I’m not so sure about that, Rog. It seems to me that Santa, the Tooth Fairy, etc. are stories that the kids are EXPECTED to cast off. By treating the discard of a fairy tale as a rite of passage, doesn’t the story act as a sort of Skepticism 101? In a sense, the story trains kids to understand that supernatural claims aren’t necessarily true.
December 7th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
I feel a campaign coming on…. Get the Christ out of Christmas as they highjacked our nice pagan midwinter solstice festival in the first place.
December 7th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
This is just another device used by the church to whine about being marginalised by those nasty atheists who want to hurt the baby jesus.
Ho fricking ho ho!
I like the time off work and the cheap booze offers but you can stick the rest up your hideous christmas jumper.
…and plastic santas on your wall are not tasteful at any time of year
…and as for plastic trees with glass balls hanging off – what? Are you kidding? Why FFS!
December 7th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Since the pagans were off having a good time at this time of the year and ignoring the pushy upstart xtians, the xtians were then able to celebrate the christ-mass. When they got into power and were busy oppressing everyone, they made the christ-mass official on the the completely wrong day of 25Dec. Its been down hill ever since. But you all must realize that the so called war on Xmas is being pushed by the xtians because they really do know they are loosing common power and are trying to get it back. So cheer for the solstice loud and strong so they know they do not own this season.
December 7th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
I can imagine that it is useful for a child’s development for them to disabuse themselves of believing in fairy tales. However I can’t help feeling that many atheists, and folk who do not feel too much association with Christianity, might be too ready to acquiesce to the status quo when it comes to the myths that are foisted upon their offspring.
December 7th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
What a bunch of whiny bullies. They claim gay people are militant, yet they’ll refuse to shop at a store because they don’t put up “Christmas” signs. Could you imagine LGBT people refusing to shop at a store because it didn’t have a rainbow flag flying? Why do Christians insist everyone kowtow to them and only them?
December 8th, 2009 at 11:14 am
To quote Terry Pratchett in Hogfather;
Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They’re not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what’s the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?
We need to, at least while we’re young, to be indulged in with our little imaginary friends, but we then grow up and realise that they are imaginary, but we apply what we learnt, kindness, being ‘good’, to the real world.
I think. I only got two hours sleep last night, I’m not fully awake.
December 8th, 2009 at 11:34 am
The Christians have hijacked the pagan holidays for a long time now, time to take back our holidays, the meaning of Christmas wont be lost, but really Christ wasn’t born on Dec 25th, no one knows when he was born, or even if he existed at all. The winter solstice is a magical time of year when the early peoples wondered if the sun would come back. And the stories of St. Nicholas bringing gifts to children is a wonderful one and may his spirit live on. If we take religon out of the holidays maybe we could be all inclusive!!
December 9th, 2009 at 3:39 am
huh…..what a bunch of whiny bitches.
I work at Home Depot….lemme just say I’m disappointed that only 15% of fundies find us offensive. We can do better than that! Oh, and the reason why we don’t have baby jesus statues is because alot of us have crude taste for prop comedy
December 10th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Stuart H–yeah, what you said.
Me and my neighbor and my daughter entered our local Christmas parade a few years back. We took three of our neighbor’s llamas, dressed ‘em up to look like camels, put some fake boxes on ‘em marked “gold” “frankincense” and “myrrh”, dressed ourselves up in weird clothes and paraded down the street as–the Three Wise Women! (hee hee)
We didn’t care about the religious stuff, it was just the only thing we could think of to do with llamas…