Dec. 19, 2005 - 21:28 MST

Fightin' Words

Maybe it is just the impending Christmas (Don't you dare wash my mouth out with soap), or the political overload of recent times. But I do wonder why that nowadays if anybody does ANYTHING or says ANYTHING or says they think ANYTHING about SOMETHING, there is an immediate uproar and the stage fills with activists -- with or without a cause -- creating a furor which blazes in me as well as amazes me.

I can't recall that in my younger days there was so much uproar all the time about ? tolerance ? ? patriotism ? and such things. Were there civil disobediences when a Columbus day parade was scheduled ?

So now is it to be fisticuffs because someone says, "Merry Christmas," or doesn't say, "Merry Christmas" any time? Will there be groups with the differing points of view like the light flashing off the facets of a diamond ring ?

What the heck happened to, "Peace on earth, good will to men" ?

I am not in favor of mandatory prayer in schools nor am I upset if there is a Christmas tree in the hall. There were always trees, ornaments and tinsel on a tree in our school -- even though there were children of a different faith attending there. There were no semi-riots over it either.

All this in preparation for a column in today's Rocky Mountain News By betsy Hart of the Scripps Howard News Service, quoted in full without italics or bolds. Herewith:

Christians needn't try so to hold onto 'Christmas'

I can't help but wonder if some of us Christians hang on too hard to "Christmas." Yes, it's true that the banning of the word "Christmas" or any symbols having anything remotely to do with "Christmas" at this time of year, drives me a little nuts. As Fox News anchor John Gibson reveals in his new book, The War On Christmas, one school district in Texas actually banned red-and-green plates at its "holiday" party. How silly is that ?"

"On the other hand, I'm not sure we Christians should spend too much time saving the public use of read-and-green decorations, or candy canes, or "Christmas" trees, or Christmas cards or demand that stores wish us a "Merry Christmas when we purchase our "Christmas i Pods and Palm Treos at this time of year, either."

"I mean, none of this has anything to do with Christmas. In fact, Christmas doesn't have anything to do with "Christmas." Let's face it. Scholars believe that Christ was probably born in the spring."

"Early Christians didn't consider celebrating his birth. That "Holy Day" came later, probably when early missionaries conflated clebrating Christ's birth with pagan festivals as a way of trying to covert lost souls. The holiday didn't really catch on as we know it today until Victorian times."

"In fact, in part because our early American Puritan forefathers were opposed to the pagan origins of "Christmas," in many early New England communities its celebration was literally banned. (For the same reasons, it was also banned for a time in England in the 1600s.) No, little Puritan children never got to sit on Santa's lap."

"When I lived in Virginia, I was a member of a Presbyterian church that did not officially recognize "Christmas." While the parishioners, including the pastor, typically celebrated the holiday with all its trimmings as largely a secular celebration, it wasn't part of our church calendar in any way because an annual celebration of Christ's birth wasn't called for in Scripture."

"Now look, I go ga-ga over "Christmas." I love the songs, the lights, the gifts, the chaos, the parties, the whole deal. I don't hold back. It's fun ! The older I get, the more ga-ga I get. When my first was born, I was adamant that I wouldn't tell him that Santa Claus was anything but a lovely story. By the time number four came along, I was adamant that the Santa she was talking to at the mall just had to be the real one."

"I just recognize it for what it is -- a largely secular celebration."

"Now I am all for Christmas Day being a national holiday. I mean whatever one's religious beliefs, few dispute that Christ was in fact a major historical figure. I've often heard it put that judging by the history of the world itself, Christ was the most important historical figure to have ever existed."

"(All the more amazing he lived for only 33 years in a Roman backwater, never physically wrote a word himmself, or commanded an army.) I'm as offended as anyone over the silly attack on "Christmas," But only because in many ways I think it's a metaphor for a larger (attempted) attack on Christianity by America's elites."

"I'm just arguing that we Christians have to keep what matters to our faith in perspective, and that means that among other things, I don't think that we necessarily have to have to fall on our swords to protect red-and-green plates."

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I guess, in a way part of this furor strikes me much like seeing members of opposing football teams kneeling and praying for victory, hoping that God will favor them with a WIN.

Are we going back to the days of the mountain men fueds, Hatfields and McCoys ? Even the sounds of verbal battles are becoming deafening. Let's declare peace and quit belaboring each other with FIGHTIN' WORDS . . . . . . . . . .

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