Holiday Spirit: From the Heart, Not the Mall

[waiting for hope]

By Colbert I. King

Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page A21

Silly me! And here I've been thinking that Target, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Kmart and America's malls are places where people go this time of year to shop. But thanks to the Rev. Jerry Falwell and others in his wing of Christendom, I now know that those stores are there during the holiday season to serve as places of worship. What other conclusion can be drawn?

Falwell, as he desires his flock to know, wants Americans to do their shopping at stores that greet you with "Merry Christmas" and that celebrate the birthday of Jesus in carols, religious decorations and marketing displays. In my old neighborhood, that used to be called "church." Not in Falwell's world. Retailers inclined to greet their customers with the inclusive "Happy Holidays" are being branded by him and his bunch as "anti-Christmas" and have been threatened with boycotts, petitions and letter-writing campaigns. The use of "Season's Greetings" is viewed by religious rabble-rousers as a sign of discrimination against Christianity and a weak-kneed concession to people who hate Christmas.

On the other hand, retailers displaying Christian symbols are considered friends rather than foes of Christmas, and thus worthy of Falwell's blessings. Shame, however, on those stores that celebrate the holiday season in a way that doesn't show favoritism to one religion over another -- turn thy face away from those retailers who embrace customers of all faiths or those of none at all. They are regarded in Falwell's world as enlistees in the war against Christmas. Falwell's fellow traveler Pat Buchanan wrote in a column titled "Christianophobia" a year ago that "it needs to be said. What we are witnessing here are hate crimes against Christianity -- the manifestations, the symptoms of a sickness of the soul . . . the fear and loathing of all things Christian, coupled with a fanatic will to expunge from the public life of the West all reminders that ours was once a Christian civilization and America once a Christian country."

News Flash, Pat: Stores sell stuff. To everyone. That's what they do. They're not churches. They are stores.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901395.html

I thought this was pretty realistic....