O holiday Tree, O holiday Tree ...

It’s holiday time again. We’re very likely to have a White holiday here. A reasonably Merrie one at that—just don’t be so rude as to say the word, C*******s. For some reason, that word, the one the holiday is actually based upon, has become a major political no-no.
Our schools can talk about the Mexican holiday, Dia de las Muertos (Day of the Dead), and display the rather ghastly skeletons and skulls. I’ve seen many classes where American children are taught in detail about Kwanzaa (designed in 1966 to be an alternative to C*******s). No one would object if I were to explain the origins of Hanukah or Ramadan or even the Hajj.
But let’s not explain what shepherds or Magi or mangers have to do with anything. (There are plenty of American kids with absolutely no idea.) That this might be part of the warp and woof of American culture is irrelevant. That somehow stables and overstuffed inns created the biggest shopping binge on the American calendar must remain a dark secret.
The stores no longer play old fashioned carols. No, no—impolitic! The speakers blare contemporary songs about Santa, Rudolph and coming home for the holidays. Oh yes, there’s not an American child of whatever background or faith who doesn’t know all about Santa and his elves.
But if the kiddies were ever to find out the actual story behind the holiday, the ACLU and many others fret, all of our civil liberties, our democratic freedoms would be compromised if not forever lost. (Better to whisper quietly that Washington turned the Revolutionary War around by attacking the Hessians on Holiday Eve.)
This has become a form of insanity. To reduce the Christmas story (there, I wrote it) to the level of political and cultural subversion—to make it the very word into a socially unacceptable obscenity—is a form of discrimination that would once have filled the streets with protest.
Oh, I am told, it’s because you Christians are the majority and if we allowed you to explain yourselves or put up a crèche in a public place on Christmas Eve, that would be oppressive. Well, if being in the majority makes one an oppressor, we had best check into the current Democratic Party.
I’ve always felt—and observed—that the most frustrating bully (oppressor, if you will) was the little guy who kept baiting a bigger one. The big kid winds up feeling absolutely helpless. He can’t hit the little kid (I tried once, the consequences were nasty). No teacher will come to his defense against a chap so much smaller than he is.
There is no one more helpless—no one with less legal or social remedy—than the picked on big guy. It gives a meanly disposed small chap absolute license to do what he wills. That seems to be very much the position Christians in America are finding themselves in, helplessly. The suppression of Christmas is just one obvious example.
All I would ask for is equal time. If Kwanzaa and Hanukah are explained, let us tell the story behind all the presents, the vacation, the jolly fat elf in red and the incredible number of ads in the newspapers. After all, Christianity is as validly a part of world culture as is Islam, Hinduism or Judaism.
It seems to me American school kids have as much right to know the story behind a holiday that is celebrated by half the world’s population as they do to know about a festival held each year in a single nation in Latin America, The Day of The Dead.
Since we pride ourselves on being a diverse society, I shall take no offense if you offer me a Hanukah or Kwanzaa greeting. I expect you to take none, if in the holy name of diversity, I reply, Merry Christmas.