This year, President Obama's getting flak for his own personal War on Christmas
The card selected by the Obamas announces: "Season's Greetings." Inside, it reads: "May your family have a joyous holiday season and a new year blessed with hope and happiness."
But Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., said abandoning Christmas at Christmas is just plain wrong. On Tuesday, he introduced a resolution calling for the protection of the sanctity of Christmas. So far, 44 lawmakers, Democrat and Republican, have co-signed the bill.
"I believe that sending a Christmas card without referencing a holiday and its purpose limits the Christmas celebration in favor of a more 'politically correct' holiday," Brown told Fox News Radio on Thursday.
Yes, Representative Henry Brown seriously introduced a (non-binding) resolution in the House of Representatives to protect Christmas, which currently has 72 Republican co-sponsors as well as Democrat Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, who apparently hasn't been bought off by the nefarious secular progressives yet.
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected for use by those who celebrate Christmas.
Whereas Christmas is a national holiday celebrated on December 25; and
Whereas the Framers intended that the First Amendment of the Constitution, in prohibiting the establishment of religion, would not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas;
(2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and
(3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.
Now, it's not entirely clear to me how many Christmas symbols, like an evergreen tree, electric lights, a "frosty" snowman, "Jingle Bell Rock" playing on a mall PA till it drives you insane, etc. have anything to do with any God, but to each his own, I guess.
At any rate, it's not like this is Congress being out of touch with the people. There's a grassroots website, Stand for Christmas, which lets consumers rate how Christmas-friendly, Christmas-negligent or Christmas-offensive a retailer is.
The most offensive retailer at present is "The Gap", which was founded by Donald George Fisher, z"l. That's right, (as if there were a doubt as to who the "secular progressives" are), Mr. Fisher was Jewish, and a major donor to San Francisco Bay Area Jewish causes.
Banana Republic, founded by Mel Ziegler, who seems to be yet another "secular progresive" Yid, is also up there-of course, it's been owned by The Gap, Inc. for most of its existence. American Eagle Outfitters, founded by Mark and Jerry Silverman, need I say more. Old Navy has, from what I can see, always been under the Gap.
Of course, on the other hand, Kohl's is one of the most pro-Christmas retailers, and Max Kohl was definitely Jewish (as were his sons Senator Herb Kohl and Allen Kohl), and Best Buy, the second worst, was founded and is currently run by German descended (I assume) Catholic [to the extent of being on the board of a Catholic university] Richard Schulze. So who knows.
At any rate, American warriors against Christmas would do well to look to Eretz Yisrael to find out how to really bring down Christmas. The Lobby for Jewish Values is really bringing it:
Backed by rabbis, and with the self-righteous air of the American Christian right, lobby chairman Ofer Cohen told the Israeli media that he had considered publishing a list of businesses bold enough to put up Christmas decorations, call for a boycott against them, and - with a little help from Jerusalem Rabbinate - revoke the kashrut certificates of said hotels and restaurants.
The article, however, does not really explain why they're going after Christmas so hard. To clarify, it's not so much because it's non-Jewish as because it's Christianity. Many if not most poseks (interpreters of Jewish law) have ruled that Christianity is an idolatrous religion. I'm not going to get into why, but this is almost certainly the root cause. For instance, this is why Rav Haskel Lookstein got into hot water for having gone to the Interfaith prayer service at the National Cathedral, not just because of the fact that prayer was happening, but even because it was in a church.
“To go into a cathedral, in this case an Episcopalian cathedral in the main sanctuary, is certainly by most accounts not appropriate," the executive director of the RCA, Rabbi Basil Herring, told JTA. "If one wants to visit the Sistine Chapel to view the art of Michelangelo it is problematic.
On the other hand, apparently Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel Yonah Metzger wanted to enter the arsoned Yasuf mosque when he went to condemn the actions, but was prevented by the villagers; i.e. Jewish law had no problem with it. This is because Islam is universally deemed non-idolatrous by Jewish law, due to its steadfast opposition to any sort of visual depictions of religious things, as we of course saw during the Mohammad cartoon controversy.
