Mr. John C. Wright ponders the question in his new column for Dangerous:
Why must a Leftist hate Christmas, then? Let us look at it as a multiple choice question.
(1) A Leftist is rude.
(2) A Leftist is a killjoy.
(3) A Leftist is divisive.
(4) A Leftist hates America.
(5) A Leftist hates Christ.
(6) All of the above.
Let us ponder each possible answer:First, the War on Christmas is waged to be rude.
It is rude, but this is not why Uncle Screwtape encourages his useful idiots to be idiots about it. Rudeness is merely a means to an end.
This war is not just a matter of public buildings replacing baby Jesus from nativity scenes with Kami the AIDS-awareness muppet, or a public schools holding A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS as a school play but deleting one scene where Linus quotes the Gospel of Luke. These are just steps.
It is not just a matter of trotting out tired old chestnuts about Christmas trees being pagan in origin or Christ’s birth being a retelling of the birth of Horus, or Mithra, or Krishna.
Let us digress a moment to remember that all those old chestnuts are bogus. All fake news.
The practice of decorating Christmas trees dates from Eighteenth Century Germany, which had not been pagan for over a thousand years.
Horus’s birth was traditionally celebrated in August, not December, and he was born to avenge his father’s death, not to cure mankind of sin. Mithra was not born, he was carved out of a rock.
As for Krishna, he was not the firstborn of a virgin, but the eighthborn of a married matron. An evil king seeks his life, but not for the reason Herod sought Christ’s. At Krishna’s birth, Vishnu appears from heaven, and whisks the mother away, brushing evil serpents and raging floods from her path. Not a long donkey ride to Egypt here.
She gives Krishna to a kindly cowherd to raise, and takes the cowherd’s daughter in swap. Upon returning, when the tyrant enters the dungeon seeking the child’s life, the cowherd’s daughter is transfigured into the goddess Yogamaya and ascends to heaven. Later, Krishna grows up to seduce rural maidens. No getting lost in a temple arguing points of law with old graybeards for this boy.
Besides, even if each jot and tittle of Christmas tradition was taken from pagan forebears unchanged except for the name “HORUS” crossed out in bright red crayon, and the name “CHRIST” crudely thrust in, so what?
The pagan forebears of the Christians were themselves the very people who converted and became Christian. Their culture also was baptized. Words, dress, architecture, calendar, was unchanged. The names of months, weekdays, planets, constellations, were kept.
Everything they kept was a pagan survival into Christianity. It all became Christian.
What was left behind was sodomy, polygamy, pederasty, divorce (yes, the Romans had that), contraceptive pharmaceuticals (yes, the Romans had that, too) and the belief that Caesar was sacred, but not human life.
The pagan things that did not survive are the very things the modern world wants to return to us: sodomy, polygamy, pederasty, divorce, contraception. A despot worshipped as a god. Life held cheaply. Some returned came in the 1930’s, some in the 1960’s. Some are coming.
So, to make it clear: putting pretty lights on a tree, or weaving a wreath of evergreens, is not a pagan survival. These things did not spring out of Christianity. The only thing that honestly can be said to have sprang out of paganism, and which survives to the modern day, is Christianity.
But these silly, trifling slurs and insults against nativity scenes and Charlie Brown plays, and these silly, trifling arguments about the alleged pagan roots of Christmas are not being done to change décor nor change minds. They are done to affront, not to persuade.
Win or lose, the bickering destroys something of the Christmas spirit. The rudeness is an instrument to kill the joy and pleasure of the season, to make a shared solemnity into a bone of contention.
It is done to ruin the fun.
So the War on Christmas is waged to kill the fun of Christmas, to end the joy.
Don’t let them do it. Feel the joy. Feed the joy. Fuel the joy.