being allowed to freely practice your religion and the right to use the police power of the govt., social intimidation, economic pressure, etc to force everyone to follow your sect's rules. The US was formally founded on the legal principle of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, everyone endowed with inalienable human rights, but when, after 200 years, steps were taken to create a society where these ideas had a practical applilcation and were not just an abstract and unpractced principle, by, among other things, outlawiwng the enforcement of a racial caste system, by allowing adults to talk, read, write about and practice sex without govt. approval, by allowing women to make medical decisons about their own bodies, etc. the right got up in arms and has stayed that way. Anyone who is not a commited religious zealot should understand and act politically on the knowledge that the right will never consider itself free from persecution until it can dictate how everyone will live; they will never be satisfied with less and compromise will acomplish nothing to solve the problem. Hopefully the Terry Schiavo fiasco has demonstrated this to people. If it didn't I don't know what it will take.

I didn't realize the ancestry of this assault on the First Amendment. The John Birch Society, and Ford's "The International Jew"? Whew.

It's also interesting to read, on the History Channel's website, that when we were undoubtedly a more "Christian" nation, you could celebrate the "traditional" English Christmas in Virginia, but if you had a yule log, figgy pudding and a wassail in pre-revolutionary Boston, it would cost you a five-shilling fine. So, in fact, the only assault on Christmas has come from other religions.

What these Babbits don't seem to realize is, the Christmas at Wal-Mart and the other frantic shopping malls are not a traditional Christmas, but one that has been hijacked by the proponents of commericalism. Before the Victorian era, Christmas was either a strictly religious day, or a time of drunkenness, kissing under mistletoe, and all kinds of hijinks. The letter from Wal-Mart, which got its author fired, is in fact true.

Far from a War on Christmas, I see a not-so-slow inundation of religion into more and more of society. The latest outrage: Dec. 24 is being held as sacred. Last year, a football game was scheduled for the afternoon (not evening), and the far-right went nuts. Christmas Eve is as much a religious holiday as Mardi Gras. That is, not at all. It's a family holiday, a secular bonding, in front of Midnight Mass (does Bill O'Reilly go to Midnight Mass? Just asking) and the next day's commercial gluttony. If someone thinks a football game is more important than their family, that shows the priorities of people who practice the religion. Nothing more.

Many businesses let employees off early that day, but it's not a requirement, either legal or moral. (Hmm... do outsourced workers get to go home early?)

Modern American Christmas celebration owes more to Charles Dickens than Jesus. The religous right should stop lying about others and stop lying to themselves. Perhaps they need to be told the penalties for bearing false witness.

It took me the longest time to figure this out, but I've come to believe that this overwhelming desire of the Christian Right to portray themselves as persecuted derives from their peculiar view of their own religion. Their own church tells them that their most important obligation is to proclaim and spread their faith, and what's the big deal with that if they aren't persecuted? Following the teachings of Jesus come very low down their list of Things to Do.

For me, I'll be wishing shop clerks and missionaries a Gud Yule. Talk about your persecuted and coopted religions!

You have to understand how this kind of rhetoric functions within the conservative Christian community.

First, and most important, Christianity, especially the conservative kind, always has to have an enemy. You see this in the New Testament and in the writings of many early Christians. For Conservative Christains, having an enemy is part of the process of self-definition and self-identity.

For conservatives, whether Christian or not, one of the most important things is to keep people all het up about something or other. A few years ago I had an interesting conversation with a friend. I said to him that I didn't understand why these conservatives were always so angry all the time -- always denouncing this or that, always complaining, always pissed off.

He replied "you don't get it, do you."

I said "get what?"

He replied "the whole POINT of all this stuff is to keep people in a continual state of outrage and umbrage. This is what these writers DO. This is a case where the medium is indeed the message. The purpose of the message is not to communicate any particular information. And frankly, the message is mostly bull**** anyway. The purpose is to make sure that people are pissed off all the time. When people are pissed off they go to the polls, they contribute money, they spread the word. That doesn't happen with cautious, reasonable arguments."

So with the Christmas thing, I think what we have is an intersection of interests between religious and political conservatives: it gives the religious a new enemy, and the politicos a new outrage.

I don't understand why Christians would even want their diety associated with an organization like Wal-Mart at all. If Christians wanted to create in people a sense of reverence toward their religion, it would make more sense to work to limit the use of the iconography as much as possible in the public sphere. In other words, it would be far more awe inspiring if Christians felt so passionately about their religion that they argued that it cheapens their faith to have it co-opted by Wal-Mart as part of an advertising pitch. Christians misunderstand the first prinicple of economics, viz. nothing is precious that isn't scarce. Because things like the name of Jesus, pictures of Jesus, and little plastic statues of Jesus are plastered everywhere by everybody without any scruples whatsoever, Jesus is not precious. If you really cared about Jesus at all you would take at least as much care in how you use his name and image as, for example, the Nike corporation takes in controlling the use of the famous "Nike Swoosh" logo. Not just anybody can use it anywhere for whatever they want to sell. Christians should think more deeply about the fact that in the "Old Testament" is was a blasphemy punishable by death to even say God's name in public.