Casper's Haunted Christmas

I am a soldier in the war against Christmas. I enlisted four years ago, after having graduated high school and moved from the southwest to the northeast for a liberal arts education. Boot camp was tough, but I came out of it a hardened Freedom Fighter, and have joined the ranks of the liberal elite in a Shock and Awe campaign against a holiday celebrated by the vast majority of Americans, who, nonetheless, feel persecuted by our insignificantly-numbered coalition.

Recently, however, our good works (advancing inclusiveness and respecting diversity) have fallen victim to a smear campaign. We have been accused, wrongly, of such inane tactics as requiring Christmas trees to be referred to as "Holiday trees." Aside from the utter falseness of these charges, the fact that so pointless and senseless a tactic might be attributed to our coalition is downright insulting. Christmas trees are Christmas trees, and there is nothing wrong with calling them such. Jews (and black people) don't have trees associated with their holidays--if they did, then a government would not be able to discriminate by displaying only one type of tree. As it is, however, there is nothing whatsoever religious about Christmas trees, despite the recent assertion to this effect by the Christian religion, whose cries foul are somehow rooted in this falsity. Why, oh why, do they care about trees? Or, for that matter, displays of Santa and his reindeer?

But the most vile charge against our coalition is perhaps that we have caused retailers to require employees to greet customers with a generic "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas." This charge does have its basis in reality, but our group has little to do with enacting such a policy. Christian-folk have subsequently called for a boycott of Target stores, and Wal-Mart (a wasteland of low-prices and high-morality) is, reactionarily, requiring employees to say "Merry Christmas," despite the fact that Christmas is weeks away from the day after Thanksgiving. Such a phrase, as well as being exclusive, also sounds stupid uttered in early December. It is not Christmas until December 25th, though I will allow for this phrase being used on Christmas Eve, and the now-rarely-observed "12 Days of Christmas." Would you instruct employees to say "Happy Easter" as early as Valentine's Day?, or more absurdly, "Happy 4th of July" in June? The greeting "Happy Holidays" is one that encompasses a series of holidays, being the only appropriate greeting for a period of time designated for shopping and feeling the "holiday spirit." "Season's greetings" works as well, I suppose. "Happy Jesus' Birthday," the so-called "real meaning of Christmas" just sounds stupid when it is not his birthday (we'll forgive the fact that December 25 is also not Jesus' birthday--it is merely observed then).

Stupid stupid stupid, and we, the coalition in the war against Christmas, are proud that retailers have come of their own accord to this fact--realizing that it is in their best (fiscal) interests not to exclude customers shopping for EIGHT (8) FREAKING DAYS of gift-giving! -- not to mention the black people shopping for Kwanzaa gifts who could, we very well know, quite easily decide to rob the stores causing them offense, as they do all the time, that's how they all have such nice clothes and iPods and jewelry. Duh.



In closing, Christians--fuck off. No one gives a shit. Lots of people like Christmas, and lots of people like Jesus. It's your own damn fault that not even your people put the two together anymore.




Is it weird that, to celebrate Jesus' birth, Christians decorate the very tree that their Lord and Savior would one day be nailed on--his life ended by crucifixion?


I think it's a little weird.