It's hard to overstate how dangerous these people are, even though this LA Times article just scratches the surface. Here's the LA Times article:
This Season, Greetings Are at Issue
A Southern church presses store workers to say 'Merry Christmas,' not 'Happy Holidays.'
By Ellen Barry
Times Staff Writer
December 18, 2004
RALEIGH, N.C. -- This year, as Christmas season swung into gear, Pastor Patrick Wooden's followers fanned out to shopping malls across Raleigh to deliver a muscular message of holiday cheer: As Christian shoppers, they would like to be greeted with the phrase "Merry Christmas" -- not a bland "Happy Holidays" -- and stores that failed to do so would risk losing their business.
Nearly six weeks later, some citizens in Raleigh are seething over what they see as an attempt to force religion into the public square.
But others say "Merry Christmas" is rolling off their tongues more easily and more often than in previous years.
Conservative Christians nationwide have converged around the topic of Christmas, complaining that secularists and nonbelievers have tried to obliterate the holiday's religious meaning.
In Oklahoma and Miami, local skirmishes have erupted over the display of nativity scenes on government property. A California man has called for a boycott of Macy's and Bloomingdale's department stores, demanding the phrase "Merry Christmas" be used. In Denver, the mayor's attempt to remove "Merry Christmas" from a light display raised such a howl of protest that he reversed his decision.
Here in Raleigh, the grass-roots campaigning has focused on retailers. And it's been so invigorating that the church is making plans for next year, said Wooden, a barrel-chested former football player who leads a conservative black congregation of about 3,000.
"Our position is: If they want the gold, frankincense and myrrh, they should acknowledge the birth of the child," said Wooden, pastor of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ.
Conservative Americans feel ready to push back against "the secularists or the humanists or the elitists" who dominate popular culture, said the Rev. Mark Creech of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, which is based in Raleigh.
"It's a cultural war. We are in the thick of it," Creech said. "It's not so much an attack on us. It's an attack on Christ."
Throughout history, religious people have fretted over the holiday's secular aspects, said Penne Restad, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of "Christmas in America: A History."
Created by the Roman Catholic Church in the 4th century, the celebration of the nativity coincided with pre-Christian feasts, allowing observant Christians to "then go out the door and participate in Saturnalia," Restad said.
In pre-Colonial days, English authorities looked on the holiday as a riot of drunkenness and hooliganism. American Puritans rejected it completely, preferring to get up and go to work. Not until the 1820s and '30s, with the holiday "getting rowdier and rowdier and more destructive," did Americans redefine it as a safe and private family time, Restad said -- the "old-fashioned Christmas" celebrated in carols and Currier & Ives prints.
Karal Ann Marling, author of "Merry Christmas! Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday," called complaints about secularization "complete and utter bunk."
"If you think Christmas meant the baby Jesus in the past, it didn't," said Marling, a professor of art history at the University of Minnesota.
Still, the last 20 years have seen a corporate trend toward generic holiday celebrations -- brought about not through the law, since private businesses are free to decorate as they like, but by a desire not to offend, a retail expert said.
At Cary Towne Center, a mall just outside Raleigh, displays featured azure and white artificial trees, massive suspended ornaments and flakes of iridescent plastic which, from a distance, bore a resemblance to snow.
Heather Vandeusen, manager at the Body Shop, which sells skin-care products, said off-site managers train her staff to say "Happy Holidays."
"If my corporate allowed it, I wouldn't have a problem with it," said Vandeusen, 20. "I still say 'Merry Christmas,' personally."
A major shift took place in the 1990s, when corporations became sensitive to complaints of customers on both ends of the political spectrum, said Russell Sway, international president of the Institute of Store Planners, an Atlanta-based association of design and merchandising specialists.
"On the one hand, you have a board of directors who's yelling at you for doing anything that offends anyone. On the other hand, you have this group that's yelling at you for commercializing a religious holiday," Sway said.
Wooden and his congregation -- whose church building has a cherry-red "Merry Christmas" banner hanging across its front like a political slogan -- aim to push back against that spirit of caution.
On the day after Thanksgiving, the church ran a full-page advertisement in the Raleigh News and Observer, urging Christians to "spend their hard-earned dollars with merchants who include the greeting Merry Christmas."
Over the next week, the paper ran a series of passionate letters, many critical of the advertisement:
"What happened to the land that my parents, Eastern European immigrants, adopted as their beloved country -- a country of fairness and tolerance?" wrote Harriet Lasher.
An Episcopal priest wrote to compare the campaign to the Nazi policy requiring Jews to identify themselves with yellow stars.
Judah Segal, executive director of the Raleigh-Cary Jewish Federation, said he was not disturbed by the advertisement, and hoped it was intended to "remind Christians that there is an essence to the holiday," not to shut out others.
"We really respect and admire people who want to have religious content in their own holiday," he said.
Wooden, 43, considers the campaign such a success that he has already set aside money in the church budget -- full-page ads cost about $7,600 -- to buy a similar advertisement next year. Fresh off the fierce debate over same-sex marriage, which he opposes, he says condemnation from the left does not trouble him. On the contrary, he said: "It seems to me the greater the persecution, the stronger the church."
As far as complaints from people of other religions go, Wooden looks at it this way: An ice-cream vendor doesn't have to like every flavor he sells.
"There's one group of people who get bullied all the time, and that's Christians," he said. "I know what it is like to be bullied. It is apartheid in reverse -- the majority is being bullied by the minority."
Little has changed at Cary Towne Center, where Wooden's members delivered letters in late October: Festoons of tiny lights twinkle from the ceiling, garlands of artificial pine deck the halls, and the word "Christmas" is hard to find. Phyllis Maultsby, who owns the shop Light Years Jewelry, said pressure would not change her holiday decorating choices.
"I'm not going to be influenced, because we embrace diversity," Maultsby said. "I certainly would never want to feel like I was being bullied."
But some retailers say they're behaving a little differently this season.
Kevin Coggins, who owns a bicycle shop called Spin Cycle in Cary, said he finds it easier -- more comfortable -- to wish people a "Merry Christmas" this year, as if after years of careful "Happy Holidays," he had suddenly been given permission.
"I think the Christians are out of the closet," Coggins said.
Ed Jones, president of the Greater Raleigh Merchants Assn., agreed. This Christmas, he is more conscious than ever of "a conspiracy of leftist-leaning people that want to bring down traditional values in our country," he said.
"I don't see anything to gain by offending others, but many of us are offended ourselves," said Jones, who owns a remodeling business. "I think we -- the collective we -- are allowing a small minority of people to rule our lives. I'm opposed to that."
His wife bought cards that read "Happy Holidays" this year, Jones said, but he was careful to ink "Merry Christmas" onto every one of them.
The NY Times coincidentally published an article on the same topic in their Sunday paper, also leading with the message of intolerance from the same church in Raleigh, NC. But notice the bogus "even-handedness", which is really a rightwing slant in disguise, of the NY Times article. Shame on the NYT for that. And shame on them for quoting the disgraced Bill O'Lielly in this article.
December 19, 2004
Does Christmas Need to Be Saved?
By KATE ZERNIKE
A pastor in Raleigh, N.C., took out a full-page newspaper ad in November exhorting Christians to shop only at stores that included "Merry Christmas" in their promotions.
In Mustang, Okla., parents last week voted against an $11 million bond for schools, after the superintendent excised a nativity scene at the end of the annual Christmas play. They then erected their own manger outside the auditorium, with signs saying "No Christ. No Christmas. Know Christ. Know Christmas."
And in Kansas, The Wichita Eagle published a correction this month, noting that the tree lighted at Winterfest was the "Community Tree" not a "Christmas tree." After protests, the mayor last week declared himself "not a politically correct person" and announced that next year there would be a Christmas tree.
If the demands to "Bring Back Christmas" - or, in the words of one group in California, "Save Merry Christmas" - seem louder and more insistent this year, they are. The debate over how to celebrate the holiday without promoting religion is as perennial as a poinsettia. This year, however, conservatives, who have long pushed to "put the Christ back in Christmas," say they have been emboldened by election results that they took as affirmation that most Americans share not only their faith but also their belief that the nation has lost bearings.
But the demands to bring back Christmas are not simply part of an age-old culture war, with the A.C.L.U. in one corner and evangelicals in the other. There is also a more moderate force, asking whether the country has gone too far in its quest to be inclusive of all faiths. Why, they ask, must a Christmas tree become a holiday tree? And is singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" in a school performance more offensive than singing "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel"? "It's political correctness run amok," said Lynn Mistretta, who with another mother in Scarborough, Me., started BringBackChristmas.org. "I'm not for offending anyone, but we're excluding everyone, and everyone feels rotten about it."
Over the years, schools, governments and even department stores have toned down the mention of Christmas after complaints from Jews and others who felt excluded by a holiday they did not celebrate. "The basic proposition is that people have the right to send their children to the public schools without having them evangelized for someone else's religion," said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Texas in Austin. Those opposed to even secular celebrations of Christmas, he said, "see the increasing strength of the religious right and worry about everything they've gained over the last generation being rolled back."
But even many liberals say there is silliness in the way schools in particular try to avoid offending anyone. One school chorus in Chicago, for example, sang "We Wish You a Swinging Holiday" instead of a "Merry Christmas."
It's not just Christmas. Ms. Mistretta and Lynn Lowry say their frustration started with Halloween, when the Scarborough schools said their children could not wear costumes. In February, they observed "Friendship Day" to avoid talking about the saint in Valentine's Day. And in December, instead of Christmas, it was a literacy parade with children dressing as their favorite literary characters (sending parents to find Halloween costumes.) Ms. Mistretta said her son came home saying he was afraid to wish his friends "Merry Christmas."
She acknowledged that many non-Christian parents recall feeling excluded as children, and don't want their own children to feel the same way. "It makes me sick to hear of any child feeling that way, 30 years ago, today, or in 30 years." she said. "But there's no way we can respect each other's traditions if we don't talk about them."
In Maplewood, N.J., some parents worried that they'd become a national laughingstock after the school district banned Christmas carols, even instrumental versions, sending the brass ensemble and choirs to rehearse new repertoires just days before their performances this month. Even "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was out, because it mentions Christmas Eve.
"It's worse than silly, it's a great disservice to music education," said Tom Reingold, the father of two, who is Jewish. "There's a way to teach music and not make it coercive."
John W. Whitehead, president of the conservative Rutherford Institute, calls it the new Golden Rule: Thou Shalt Offend No One.
"I think what you're seeing is people are waking up and saying, 'Wow, you can't sing a Christmas song anymore,' " said Mr. Whitehead, whose group has for the first time in almost a decade re-issued its "Twelve Rules of Christmas" booklet outlining ways to legally include religion in Christmas displays and observances. "What really burns them is, they see Kwanzaa, they see Hanukkah, they see Frosty and they see Rudolph, but they don't see 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful.'"
Of course, for many conservatives, this controversy is not just about Christmas; it's a way to talk about a whole float of issues. Bill O'Reilly warned viewers that store clerks no longer saying "Merry Christmas" foretold the imminence of "a brave new progressive world" where gay marriage, partial birth abortion and legalized drugs run rampant.
"Some people see this as a marvelous opportunity to heat up the culture war," said Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center, and the author of its guide outlining acceptable mentions of religion at Christmas. "It's an opportunity to trigger deeper emotion and frustration that are not really about Merry Christmas, but about what kind of country we are."
The Alliance Defense Fund's "Christmas Project" radio ads demonize the American Civil Liberties Union, insisting "It's O.K. to Say Merry Christmas." (The A.C.L.U. says it never said it wasn't.) Rightmarch.com is urging those angry about what it calls the attack on Christmas to send money to "help us spread the word of conservative activism from sea to shining sea."
Conservative leaders everywhere trade tales of outrage: Candy canes banned! A school won't allow red and green napkins!
Many of these stories are more legend than truth. The A.C.L.U. defended the child in Massachusetts who wanted to distribute candy canes with a religious message. And what about that school in Kirkland, Wash., where a performance of "A Christmas Carol" was canceled because of Tiny Tim's line, "God Bless Us, Everyone"? Well, the superintendent said the performance was canceled because the group wanted to charge admission, against school policy.
But no matter. As a radio ad for the Alliance Defense Fund warns, "If we don't do something, they're going to steamroll us parents and get rid of Christmas like it never happened." School boards report that parents are pre-emptively filing complaints, only to discover that school policy does allow religious music or Christmas cards.
In the meantime, some efforts at inclusiveness flounder. In Wichita, some Jews complained that the "Community Tree" lighting was held on the first night of Hanukkah.
The plea from many is for both sides to relax a bit. As Mr. Haynes, at the Freedom Forum, said: "Sensitivity is not hostility to Christianity on the one hand. And on the other, Christmas is not always oppression."
But as the nation becomes more religiously diverse, it is also becoming more religiously divided, and some say neutrality may not be possible.
"Our constitutional system is to leave the government neutral and leave it to families and churches and synagogues," Professor Laycock said. But, he said, that can be hard in a society with many different faiths or no faith at all.
"All sides want the government on their side," he said. "They don't really want the government to be neutral."
That last sentence is, of course, a flat-out lie.
