Xtianists, Make Up Your Minds

Have you ever noticed how often the Christmas guerrillas trivialize Christmas even as they defend it? Here’s an example, by a Darlene Darleen Click [she won’t debate me, but she wants her name spelled correctly, so I’m obliging], who is upset because the University of North Carolina libraries will not be displaying Christmas trees this year. According to Eric Ferreri of the Charlotte Observer,

The trees, which have stood in the lobby areas of Wilson and Davis libraries each December, were kept in storage this year at the behest of Sarah Michalak, the associate provost for university libraries.

Michalak’s decision followed several years of queries and complaints from library employees and patrons bothered by the Christian display, Michalak said this week.

To which the above-linked Ms. Click wrote,

If these cranks aren’t loudly complaining in restaurants about being offended by the birthday cake on the next table, we can safely chalk this up to another lesson in Cultural Tolerance(tm) by Judea-Christophobic Leftists.

Ah, Ms. Click, how art thou stupid? Let me count the ways.

Let us first take up the knee-jerk assumption that people complaining about the Christmas trees must be “Leftists.” They might have been atheists (surely there are right-wing atheists), or Jews (could a Jew be a “Judea-Christophobic Leftist”?), or Seventh-Day Adventists. They might have been small-government conservatives complaining about their taxpayer dollars being spent on decorations.

That last part always confuses me. Small-government conservatives don’t want to spend taxpayer dollars on anything — well, except war. They don’t want to fund public education, maintain infrastructure, rebuild New Orleans, keep starving children from dropping dead on the streets, etc. But suggest not spending taxpayer dollars on religious displays (with which some taxpayers may disagree), and suddenly one is a “Judea-Christophobic Leftist.”

One can argue that Christmas is as much a secular and cultural holiday as a religious one, for which much of the trappings (notably anything to do with Santa Claus, flying reindeer, Christmas elves, etc., not to mention mistletoe and Yule logs, which are leftovers from Druidism) have nothing to do with the Christian religion, Claus’s mythic connections to Saint Nicholas of Myra notwithstanding. I think that’s a legitimate argument. But if you’re going to make that argument, you can’t very well complain that not observing that holiday is dissing Christianity.

But let’s get back to the trivialization part. Is Ms. Click comparing Christmas to a birthday party that might annoy other patrons in a restaurant? How is that comparison valid? Is she saying that Christmas is no big deal and if one doesn’t like it one should just ignore it? That’s fine, except to make the comparison parallel to the UNC library trees we’d have to have the annoyed patrons being forced to not only tolerate the party, but to pay for it. And then be told they won’t be allowed to have their own parties in the same space.

(I’m not going into the Establishment Clause today, although of course it applies; here’s an old post about it.)

Christmas is either a big deal, or it isn’t. Christians believe Christmas is the observance of the birth of Jesus, who, per the Council of Nicea, is “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.” And that this birth was an essential step toward redeeming the sins of mankind, a teaching at the heart of Christianity.

So, one would assume that Christmas is profoundly sacred to Christians. And if Christmas is profoundly sacred, it should not be trivialized by being compared to birthday parties or, for that matter, used to sell merchandise in department stores. One would think.

Awhile back on the other blog I wrote a post about South Carolina selling Christian license plates. The plates feature a Christian cross, which is a sacred symbol for Christians. It struck me that a practicing Buddhist would not want a Buddhist license plate, because to place a sacred symbol of Buddhism in a place where it would be splashed with mud and slush and road grime would be unthinkable. (I’m sure people have put sacred Buddhist symbols on their bumpers, but a deeply devout Buddhist would not do that.)

This gets us to the issue of sacred symbols and how one takes care of them, and sacred days and how one observes them. IMO a large part of people who use tax money and government authority to push their religion on the rest of us don’t seem terribly interested in taking care of the sacred symbols as sacred symbols. Apparently it’s more important to shove crosses in everyone’s face — obviously, as a display of tribal dominance — than to show respect for the cross as a sacred symbol and keep it out of the mud.

Likewise, years ago, Christian ministers complained that Christmas was too commercial; that Christmas observance should be taken out of department stores and kept in church. Now we’re told that if store clerks say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” that this is an affront to Christianity. (What if the store clerk — or the customer — is Jewish, and being forced by commercial enterprise to pay lip service to a Christian holiday? What is that an affront to?)

All that is really important about the observance of Christmas is that Christians are free to observe it, and I pledge that I will stand up for them in defense of that freedom if it is ever threatened.

However, religious observance of Christmas does not require that the taxpayers of North Carolina pay for Christmas trees in the state university libraries.

This week those of us practicing many forms of Japanese Buddhism, particularly Zen, are observing Rohatsu. Rohatsu is something like Zen High Holy Days. It is an observance of the enlightenment of the historical Buddha more than 25 centuries ago, and right now in every Zen monastery in the world — well, except for some western ones that observe Rohatsu later in the month — monks and lay students are cloistered in silent retreats, meditating. On December 7 (last night of Rohatsu, which ends December 8 ) many will meditate through the entire night. It’s a way big deal. (I’m doing Rohatsu Lite — I’ve driven to the local Zen center to meditate for an hour and a half every day this week, and will be there all day tomorrow.)

We do this because it is important to us to do this. We’re not asking taxpayers to pay for it, nor do we expect anyone who is not a Buddhist to give a bleep.

Likewise, Christians are free to put up as many Christmas displays as they like — on their own or the church’s property, with their own money. It’s their religion, and it’s up to them, not taxpayers, to take care of it.

I’m not personally bothered by Christmas displays, including taxpayer-funded ones. I think wreaths and Christmas trees are pretty. Some of my Buddhist readers of the other blog say they observe Christmas, albeit in a non-Christian way. “After I took refuge, my Christmas tree became an enlightenment tree,” said one.

Still, apparently the trees bothered some people. Back to Eric Ferreri of the Charlotte Observer,

Michalak said that banishing the Christmas displays was not an easy decision but that she asked around to library colleagues at Duke, N.C. State and elsewhere and found no other one where Christmas trees were displayed.

Aside from the fact that a UNC Chapel Hill library is a public facility, Michalak said, libraries are places where information from all corners of the world and all belief systems is offered without judgment. Displaying one particular religion’s symbols is antithetical to that philosophy, she said.

“We strive in our collection to have a wide variety of ideas,” she said. “It doesn’t seem right to celebrate one particular set of customs.”

Or, you could display all of them. I believe today is the first day of Hajj, for example. I’m sure Ms. Click wouldn’t mind if the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill used taxpayer dollars to put up a Muslim display to go along with the Christmas trees.

My point is that if Christians would stop taking affront at non-Christians who don’t kowtow to Christmas, and instead just observe Christmas with all the solemnity and reverence it ought to require, the world would be a better place.

(BTW, as thick as Ms. Click is, she’s a genius compared to Don Surber. He seems to think that because the UNC is in a town named Chapel Hill, the library must be a chapel. Or something.)

29 thoughts on “Xtianists, Make Up Your Minds

  1. I will correct the spelling of your name, but I didn’t make a cartoon character of you. You did that yourself.

    And I notice you address none of my arguments. So you’re OK with putting a Hajj display in the UNC library, then?

  2. Great post. There are in fact many right-wing conservatives (Libertarians) that are atheists. And since you’re reading, Ms. Click, we pagans want our Yule tree back. Of course, we simply decorated ours where they stood in the forest so they would continue to grow, rather than murder them by chopping them down and dragging them into our houses. We’re very pro-life like that.

  3. You wrote:
    “What if the store clerk — or the customer — is Jewish, and being forced by commercial enterprise to pay lip service to a Christian holiday?”

    The same question was raised here:
    http://www.helium.com/items/1253098-anti-semitism-in-the-response-to-the-war-on-christmas

    I would think it would trivialize the holiday not only by commercializing it but by forcing non-believers to participate, thus making it less special for non-believers to celebrate and define for themselves.

  4. As a church-going Christian, I agree with everything you say, Maha. (And my best wishes for a reflective Rohatsu!)

    My mind boggles when right-wing Christian lawyers argue in favor of public display of the Ten Commandments saying that it’s not a religious text but a legal one. (“Thou shalt have no gods before me” isn’t religious?) Or when they argue that government use of “In God we trust” is innocuous because it doesn’t mean anything?

    I’ve never seen any attack on Christianity from non-Christians that comes anywhere near to the attacks that regularly come from those who call themselves Christians. Sigh.

  5. Offended by the birthday cake at the next table? But, but, … what kind of analogy is that?

    For one thing, we ALL have birthdays. We DON’T all have Christmas.

    For another thing, I know a lot of people who hate those restaurants where the staff is trained to come en masse and sing some loud birthday song, with clapping and what-not, essentially forcing everyone in the place to join in the celebration, and hate it to the point where they won’t go to such places. And that’s just celebrating a “holiday” which they themselves in some way observe, the birthday.

    I don’t know many who would care if a birthday cake were being served with regular restaurant levels of mirth and decorum, it’s true. But if you went to a place for a nice quiet meal with your spouse, perhaps to celebrate some event in your own lives, like a promotion, say, or your own birthday, and the establishment forced you to sit at a table with “Happy Birthday, Gary!” decorations, and you couldn’t hear your spouse over the sound of the staff singing and clapping, and the smoke from Gary’s candles made your eyes hurt, and then your request that they show some courtesy toward your own celebration resulting in mocking and insults?

    Why should Gary’s noisy and abnormal celebration interfere with my day-to-day life, or impede my own celebration of MY holiday, or lack thereof? And why should I pay for it?

    The “cranks” aren’t the ones who complain, they are the ones who can’t seem to imagine what the complaints are about.

  6. In my family, we celebrate Chrismukkah. I am a strongly agnostic Jew who enjoys going to synagogue and my husband is an orthodox atheist who was raised as a Catholic. Our boys (both bar-mitzvahed) identify as Pastafarian Jews.

    I have no problems with Christmas trees in public places. They’re pretty. I admit to feeling uncomfortable with one in my own home, as I do consider it a religious symbol. My husband, who gets the warm-fuzzies from having a tree (good childhood memories) feels that a Christmas tree in our home would have no religious significance whatsoever. We seem to have solved the problem by a) going to my sister-in-law’s for Christmas (where there is a tree) and b) not getting a tree because our cat would probably try to eat it (she’s got chewing issues).

    I wish my colleagues Merry Christmas, but few of them wish me Happy Channukah in return. Though they know I’m Jewish (and several have attended our boys’ bar-mitzvahs), they just can’t remember that Christmas is not my holiday. Sigh. One my husband’s relatives sent me an indignant e-mail (petition, I think) about the war on Christmas, having forgotten that I’m Jewish. She even attended one son’s bar mitzvah party. Go figure.

    I think that in the public sphere, when one does not know the addressee’s religious or cultural background, Happy Holidays is the way to go. To my way of thinking, it just indicates a respect for all holiday celebrations.

    And finally, I love to go to the Sing-a-long Messiah.

  7. ‘Apparently it’s more important to shove crosses in everyone’s face — obviously, as a display of tribal dominance’

    That’s the heart of it.

    Many people who adhere to cults are deeply insecure. It comforts them to have the might and majesty of the state validate their blind faith.

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  9. Dear Ms. Click,

    If you can’t stand other people’s religion or lack thereof “shoved in your face” why do you expect the rest of us to subsidize your bloodthirsty religion with taxpayer funded displays of crucifixion deaths and whatnot??

    Please get a life Ms. Click, and start doing the work you are PAID to do… I doubt seriously that you are being paid to harass non-christians and to bray loudly about how YOUR religion is being dissed (while at the same time dissing everybody else’s right to worship (or not) as they please.)

    Perhaps your supervisor needs to find out about your bigoted use of public funds to surf the internet and act like a whiny Christian bigot. I’m sure that this information is easy to find out and a polite letter to your employment officer will do the trick.

    Since I’m assuming you’re a public employee, this means that you’re being a bigot on the taxpayer dollar. Probably mine, now that I think about it.

    Or, you could just STFU about how unFAAAYYYERRRRR it is that your religious beliefs aren’t being shoved down everybody else’s throat. ya think?

  10. PB — thank you for the link. Of course there is a huge element of anti-semitism in Darleen Click’s and other Christmas guerrilla’s “reasoning.”

    A couple of years ago I ran into some who were complaining loudly that Mayor Michael Bloomberg referred to the Rockefeller Center tree as a “holiday tree,” and they couldn’t stand it. I’m saying, uh, the guy’s name is Bloomberg. Does that not suggest something to you? Nope. All they could talk about was that Bloomberg must be some liberal loon who hates Christians.

  11. DN

    My mind boggles when right-wing Christian lawyers argue in favor of public display of the Ten Commandments saying that it’s not a religious text but a legal one. (”Thou shalt have no gods before me” isn’t religious?) Or when they argue that government use of “In God we trust” is innocuous because it doesn’t mean anything?

    That always stuns me, too. What’s really going on when a person feels compelled to deny his religion in order to promote that religion? Nothing healthy, I think.

  12. Ken #8 upstream nails it – the deep insecurity of the way Xtians both shove theiir symbols in your face and feel offended when others push back, is what’s really troublesome. It’s a sign of immature spirituality.

  13. I’ve known atheists from all across the political spectrum, but the only ones who bitch and moan and complain and claim offense and cry and whine and piss and bitch about any Christian display during the Christmas season are leftists.

    The others either shrug their shoulders and say “meh’ and/ or join in the associated festivities.

    It’s only the lefties who are evangelical atheists…and militantly and bitterly so. I suspect that they just are not happy folks.

  14. I’ve known atheists from all across the political spectrum, but the only ones who bitch and moan and complain and claim offense and cry and whine and piss and bitch about any Christian display during the Christmas season are leftists.

    Hardly a representative sampling. So what about Jews and Seventh-Day Adventists?

  15. start doing the work you are PAID to do… I doubt seriously that you are being paid to harass…

    She could be harassing in her spare time.

  16. I find Ms. Click’s childish whining an insult to the many Christians I know.

    Not much more to say… her own words define themselves. Nothing in the attic but cobwebs. That whole “birthday cake” business is just bizarre.

  17. This is manufactured outrage at a relatively minor change to UNC’s holiday decorations. The trees were kept in storage this year after years of complaints from library employees and patrons. Other regional university libraries (Duke and NCSU included) were surveyed for their library holiday decor before the decision was made.
    The rest of the UNC campus has its traditional holiday decorations and performances.
    This story has low visibility locally. I’ve heard no comments pro or con at the LGBT friendly Christian church I attend. I feel welcome there, sing in their choir and participate in their many outreach programs though they know I do not share their belief.
    I also enjoy the Messiah and have sung the complete 3 part oratorio with the Raleigh Oratorio Society at Memorial Auditorium (before it was renovated) several times. It always amazed me how many people left after the Hallelujah chorus. They missed Part 3, the resurrection.

  18. Hardly a representative sampling. So what about Jews and Seventh-Day Adventists?

    I have not come across any Jews or SDA’s that want to burn down their neighbors’ Christmas trees. The ones I know think the trees are all pretty and twinkly.

    ..and they don’t pretend to be offended when I wish them well in a Christian-y way.

  19. I have not come across any Jews or SDA’s that want to burn down their neighbors’ Christmas trees. The ones I know think the trees are all pretty and twinkly.

    We’re not talking about “their neighbors’ Christmas trees.” We’re talking about Christmas displays paid for by taxpayer dollars and placed on public, as in taxpayer-owned, property. A lot of people who do not celebrate Christmas don’t want their taxes going to pay for other peoples’ religions. What people do on their own property is not an issue.You would have known that if you had read the post before you commented, assuming you can read.

    BTW, I’m banning you because you didn’t read my post before you commented, which is a violation of comment rules (see #8). If you are coming here from Protein “Wisdom,” please note that Ms. Click lied her ass off about what I wrote in this post. If you’re going by what she said I wrote instead of reading it for yourself, you have no idea what I wrote.

  20. Here in Thailand, with its vastly Buddhist population, they love Christmas, like they love Valentine’s Day, or pretty much any excuse for a holiday. And since Christianity has placed the supposed birth of Jesus, at one time or another, in each of the 12 months, it’s clear that their date for Christmas is just horning in on Yule, Solstice, Jewish and Roman celebrations. They can horn in as far as I’m concerned, but they shouldn’t complain when not everyone puts their wedged-in part of the holidays first and only on the list of things being celebrated as part of this big celebration. If they want it to be the one and only thing going on, they should move it to one of the 11 or more other dates they’ve used for Jesus’ birthday in the past.

  21. as a display of tribal dominance

    I think you nailed it. Christianity is the dominant religion in the US, so why they feel such desperate insecurity about their religious symbols that they need to mark their territory like dogs at every opportunity, is beyond me.

  22. “My point is that if Christians would stop taking affront at non-Christians who don’t kowtow to Christmas, and instead just observe Christmas with all the solemnity and reverence it ought to require, the world would be a better place.”

    This, of course, would require actual faith. Instead, with Christians of a certain stripe, you get insecurity masquerading as “faith.”

    The more insecure Christians are about themselves, the louder they get.

  23. It became obvious pretty quickly that Darleen and Fred had no interest in an honest “debate.” We’re talking onlyabout religious (and not just Christian) holidays; Darleen starts babbling about birthdays. We’re talking only about religious displays on public property, which taxpayers would pay for; they pretend we’re talking about private property.

    How offensive they are, giving the impression that all Christians are dishonest and stupid. I say this without snark. Really.

    I love Christmas; I celebrate it with my Christian family. And guess what: my Christian family would agree with maha’s post.

  24. Exactly, my mother (a hardcore Dem and economist leftist) forbids any kind of holiday decorations in her office because then she would have to put out stuff Muslims would want for the Haj or other religions and as a Christian she doesn’t want that. So consequently there is nothing. Law says you can’t favor one over another so she favors none.

  25. I think the part where Ms. Click lost me was at “Judea-Christophobic”. Has she utterly failed to understand that Christmas is not a Jewish holiday?
    I am constantly thrown by such references to Judeo-Christian anything. Nobody invokes “Buddho-Hindu” or “Islamo-Zoroastrian” mores. Since when is Judaism a subset of Christianity? There are some extremely important theological differences between the two religions – not least of which is the nature of Jesus, an important feature of any argument over Christmas displays.

  26. “Judeo-Christian” is a meaningless construct, IMO. I think some Christians invented it to sort of acknowledge that Jews Live Here Too while denying the actual differences between the two religions.

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