It was early 2017 when I saw a bumper sticker on a car in the parking lot of a business complex. It read: “We Can Finally Say Merry Christmas Again.”
We know who had just taken office that January in Washington D.C., and any doubt as to if the bumper sticker was sarcasm or not, was settled by the TRUMP/PENCE sticker beside it.
I admit that my mind reeled a bit over this, but then what should I expect from a country that elected that suit full of orange pus. It seems I live in a country with a massive percentage of people who are incapable of thinking at all, it seems, if the right emotional bone is thrown to them.
Did people really think someone was ever stopped from saying Merry Christmas? Or is this some sort of inside joke, like the folks who proudly donned the label of “Deplorable,” after Hillary Clinton remarked that half of Trump’s fan base was a “basket of deplorables”?
Note, they didn’t point their fingers at the other half of their party, but recognized themselves as the ones who owned that label. As if being deplorable was a badge of honor, if someone on the left didn’t like what they did or said.
There begins (to my eyes) the organization of Project: Own The Libs.
The basic idea was to mock anything that seemed even slightly different from their own cherished conduct and habits, and ascribe it to a mainstream practice among people on the political left – no matter how obscure the example. The ranks of the Demon-crats, as they would come to call them, were populated with furries and drag queens, communists and lesbians cat ladies, and the most evil of all – the Woke.
And then somehow the mere existence of these woke people brought harm to traditional conservatives. It was a puzzling notion that intelligent people dismissed as ridiculous, but people really were convincing themselves that they were harmed by stuff other people did even though it didn’t relate to them in any definable way.
How could two women in Seattle getting married possibly harm a man who lives in Texas? Especially since the Texan was completely unaware of the existence of the women before it was featured on his favorite conservative news channel, and became “harmful to society” in his eyes.
How could they earnestly suggest that allowing same-sex marriages would destroy traditional ones? They acted as if same-sex marriages were going to be required of all residents.
Any grievance they could think of became a cause, and any diversion from their traditional expectations became an attack on their own. They stopped simply disliking alternative views of the world, they treated them as if they were being forced to adopt these new woke policies.
From the outside it seemed absurd that someone could be so earnestly bothered by something that didn’t touch their lives in any tangible way. Absurd wasn’t even a good enough word for the job. Many of these folks acted as though they were the most put-upon people on the planet, and the rest of the country was trying to erase their traditional lives.
Never mind the fact that they could still do just what they pleased, and live the exact lives they wanted, so long as they abide by the rules we all agreed to: let others be, and mind your own business.
There was hollering and whinging; there was wringing of hands, gnashing of teeth, and rending of clothes; it was as if their children had been taken from them for forced sexual reassignment surgery, or their church being closed and the parishioners being shuttled to a mosque.
Drag queens reading books to five-year old kids in supervised libraries was seen as the left indoctrinating kids to think cross-dressing was okay. Never mind that the parents chose to bring their kids, and that no one had to. And never mind that there were virtually no incidents of drag queens abusing children, while there were seemingly weekly accounts of children being abused and violated by ministers and youth group leaders who the parents had left their children with, assuming their safety.
They never stopped defending their right to raise their children how they saw fit, while also trying to stop other people from doing the same.
The national causes included someone refusing to bake a cake for someone because the decoration included two mens’ names. And a government clerk who refused to issue the marriage license the law required her to provide, because she objected to a marriage between two people neither one of which was her.
The crowd that insisted we mind our own business when it came to their lives, were also the crowd that was very busy minding everyone else’s business.
It wasn’t just gender or marriage, it was anything that deviated from their comfort zone.
Vegans were a problem that was hurting the country. Men who painted their nails were destroying civilization. Thanksgiving dinners that didn’t include a turkey were offensive to the core of our nation. The country was being pulled down to hell by bicycle commuters, electric car owners, hip hop music, single women who owned cats, and anyone who didn’t like bacon.
Then came Happy Holidays.
Well, it didn’t just come. Happy Holidays has been a common phrase of greeting during the winter season for a very long time. In 1970 I was delivering newspapers with Happy Holidays incorporated in the banner during the last month of the year.
The term was used as early as the 19th century, even in print, and became common with businesses to cover (get this) both Christmas and the New Year (not someone else’s religious holiday).
Happy Holiday (the song) was written by Irving Berlin in 1942. Andy Williams had a big hit with the song when he paired it with The Holiday Season as a medley on his 1963 Christmas Album.
Saying Happy Holidays is traditional. Happy Holidays was a common thing to say before these angry snowflakes were born, and common through their whole lives.
But suddenly it got noticed. Someone somewhere muttered, “How come nobody says Merry Christmas anymore?” (Even though they do, a lot). And then someone posted a picture from Starbucks with Happy Holidays on their festive seasonal cups.
The poor victims of wokism melted. This was a bridge too far. A greeting that included awareness of holidays not referencing Jesus was more than they could stand.
It wasn’t just that someone said Happy Holidays, it was that they didn’t say Merry Christmas. The omission of those words was an attack on that holiday in their minds. Even while acknowledging that Christmas is included in the Holidays so happily greeted, they saw it had been demoted from its rightful place at the top of the holidays. Wishing someone Happy Holidays was an offense beyond the pale because it reduced Christmas to a mere equal with the Hanukkah, or worse, Kwanzaa.
It was an bizarre bridge to die on. But marshall their forces to die on it they did, with rounds and rounds of chatter in all the media, and conspiracy theories, and villains – globalists – trying to destroy America, and bumper stickers. It went viral in earnest, and then viral as a joke by others, who were indeed laughing at the absurdity.
And somehow other people saying Happy Holidays morphed into a ban on anyone saying it? Even though they still said it wherever they wanted? Explain this to me like I was five.
But that person put that sticker on the bumper of their car, and not as satire. This was the statement they wanted everyone who found themselves following them down the road to know about them. They were taking a stand against something so comically preposterous, as to arouse mocking laughter. Suddenly they were enjoying this new freedom that they already had, and which had never once been violated.
How much thought does it take to realize that you’ve never once not said Merry Christmas when you wanted to? That no one had ever tried to stop you, or complain if you did say it? But you advertise that you believe you were the victim on this particular issue until the last election.
MAGA (the people, not the anagram) are the meltiest, most victimized group of people ever, in light of the fact that their skin color has given them a free pass through most every checkpoint the institutions have erected. To be born advantaged, and then complain until their noses bleed about how others are trying to be acknowledged too, is bewildering to me, able as I am to see the facts of the matter.
They’re like a toddler, holding a candy cane while crying and stamping its feet because another toddler also got a candy cane.
It is treating the gradual egalitarian nature of freedom as an attack on their own freedom, as if one can only be free if others are not.
This past December I was corrected by someone when I wished them a Happy Christmas. “That’s supposed to be Merry Christmas,” they said. I told them to take it up with Clement-Clarke Moore, the author of the 19th Century poem, A Visit From St. Nicholas (commonly called The Night Before Christmas), who ended his poem with the witness describing the departure of Santa Claus with the line:
But I heard him exclaim ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
And also Happy New Year.
And Happy Hanukkah.
And Happy Yule.
And Happy Kwanzaa.
And…
…wouldn’t Happy Holidays be easier?