A fine selection of "Words To Rest In 2009."

No Runny Eggs is your one-stop landing page to see who's blogging on Christmas day.

Posting will no doubt be sparse on Christmas day (not that I was a posting machine yesterday, of course; though welcome and a happy holiday to Instapundit readers). In the meantime, let me take this opportunity to wish everyone:

A Very Merry Christmas!

Related:

And via Hot Air:

Neo-Neocon: "Twas the bloggers' night before Christmas."

And Orrin Judd has lots of Christmas-related posts. Just keep scrolling.

Michael C. Moynihan charts the strange birth and quiet passing of the P.C. "holiday."

Update: Ann Coulter claims vindication.

More: So does Kathy Shaidle.

Fair is fair: Thanks to this "alternative Christmas message" and Channel's Four's choice of host to deliver it*, England, the birthplace of Muggeridge's Law, has now run smack dab into it like an out-of-control Prius on an unsalted Seattle street.

Read More »

I interviewed Blade Runner production designer Syd Mead back in April of 2001 for Nuts & Volts Magazine (amazingly, the article is still online, here), and happily, I'm still on his email list. When Detroit gets its act together, this is what I want to pull up to a Christmas party in:

In the meantime, Boing Boing has a pretty cool interview with Mead online at YouTube.

Congress has less than a week to act on the latest economic crisis impacting the manufacturing sector...

(Though check the photo--is that any way for a man to dress when appearing before the Senate?)

Just in time for Christmas, giant stuffed microbes--it's fun, educational, contagious and plush!

(Besides, any wet smack from Miskatonic University can give a Cthulu plush for Christmas--why not be original this year, huh?)

Headline via the Derb; it perfectly fits this example of what hopefully is a one-off leftwinger's meltdown, and not a trend, transforming Thanksgiving into yet another holiday that Dare Not Speak Its Name.

Related: Heard through the Grapevine, Greg Gutfeld rounds up his Thanksiving Turkey list.

Man, when Orson Welles said that a film studio was the biggest electric train set a boy could own, he never saw this!

(Via Megan McCardle and the Blogfather, who have some thoughts on Christmas shopping. That's the next holiday the left gets the vapors over, once they've recovered from Thanksgiving.)

"Today We Learned Something Horrible About Liberals."

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds featured an intriguing quote from James Bennett of UPI:

Now, of course, Columbus Day is under attack as a holiday in the United States by the forces of political correctness. This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a miniscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.

Sorry to be a day late and a (almost) URL short on this, but I found the full essay was surprisingly challenging to track down. Happily though, the Freepers have a reprint, and it's well worth your time. Though I disagree with Bennett's conclusion that we're celebrating the wrong Italian, as Columbus Day is--sadly and idiotically--yet another traditional holiday under enough attack already.

But then, they all laughed at Christopher Columbus...

Update: Wretchard's Warning is well worth heeding.

"Many in the West will demonstrate their fierce originality and intellectual independence today by condemning Christopher Columbus using the same shopworn cliches they used last year."

So from that perspective, we should give Google bonus points today for the creative--and, gosh darn it, down right adorable--way they stuck the shiv into yet another traditional holiday.

Update: Steve Green adds:

Cursing the history that brought you here is like wishing you, yourself never existed.

But he's probably not alone in that sentiment.

Indeed. Friends don't let friends mix cocktails that blend equal portions of post-modernism and anti-modernism.

Happy Easter!

Since this newly-born "holiday" lacks the historic significance of, say, World Water Day, Google, starting from zero, sits this one out with no special logo on its splash page. Again.

(At least Dogpile's artists spent 15 minutes to dress up its mascot for the day. And as Mark Steyn notes, sadly, some aspects of the season are becoming a bit too much for traditional churches)

Rob Port writes that retail sales were up 3.6 percent, or 2.4 if you discount fuel sales:

(though it seems to me that those should be included; the economic health of our gas stations is every bit as important as the economic health of our retail stores).

* * *

The New York Times is calling these retail numbers “bleak,” but I’d be willing to wager that the folks at the Times would be dancing in the streets if their stock prices had seen 3.6% growth instead of the negative growth their stock has seen for most of the year.

Indeed.^TM And speaking of which, Glenn Reynolds notes that online sales were up over 22 percent. And don't miss this email from one of his readers:

The same schmuck, Michael Barbaro, wrote a similar story in 2005. He also wrote a story back in September of his year trying to say back to school sales only looked good, but really weren't:

Why do we care what the some schmuck at the New York Times writes anymore, anyway?

It's like reading something Andrew Sullivan writes and instead of saying, "Sullivan thinks....." we write, "The Blogosphere today announced that...."

Bologne. We need to get out of the habit of saying, "The New York Times....." and giving backing to these folks. Instead, we should say, "Michael Barbaro wrote....." and treat him just like we'd treat anyone in the blogosphere.

But the Times has layers of gatekeepers: Editors! Researchers! They wouldn't let an error or anything that smacks of an agenda creep into their paper, or its reporting on economic conditions, both here and abroad.

(And despite the best efforts of the MSM to throw cold water on it, we hope your Christmas was as enjoyable as ours. Watch for intermittent posting from us the rest of the week.)

Update: "Seven Year American Recession Watch Remains On High Alert", and it will for another 11 months--and maybe even another four years after that.

Posting will no doubt be a bit sparse on Christmas day (not that I was a posting machine yesterday, of course; I'm very happily on vacation this week). In the meantime, let me take this opportunity to wish everyone:

A Very Merry Christmas!

Related:

And via Hot Air:

Neo-Neocon: "Twas the bloggers’ night before Christmas."

Jonah Goldberg writes, "It’s a profound commentary on the state of our political culture that Huckabee’s ad is the controversial one. Huckabee promises nothing, Hillary everything":

The contrast between the Candidate of God and the Candidate of Goodies should remind everyone of P. J. O’Rourke’s timeless book Parliament of Whores.

“I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat,” wrote the indispensable O’Rourke.

“God” he explained, is “a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well being of the disadvantaged. ... God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club.”

P. J. continues: “Santa Claus is another matter. ... He’s nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without the thought of a quid pro quo.”

“Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one,” O’Rourke concluded. “There is no such thing as Santa Claus.”

P.J.’s right. But you won’t be hearing that from Hillary this holiday season.

Years ago, I remember hearing Doris Kearns Goodwin on PBS describe LBJ's Great Society as his way of giving "gifts" to the American people--and Johnson being quite surprised when the public at large (both the right and the then-burgeoning far left) turned on him. "You should like me, I'm giving you all these gifts" was (as best as I can remember) Goodwin's description of LBJ's mindset. I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see that politicians (and their hagiographic sycophants) still think of redistribution of taxpayer money as handing out gifts.

Roger Kimball reprints a holiday greeting he recently received:

To My Democrat Friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.

To My Republican Friends:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Forgive me, then, for wishing everyone Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Video related to the former greeting, here.

Megan McCardle looks back at America's wild and carefree recent history:

The wild, drunken office Christmas party used to be a staple of television, books, and movies. Now I feel as if it's dropped pretty thoroughly out of the popular imagination; the only example I can think of recently is a fleeting scene in Bridget Jones' Diary. Were office holiday parties really that much wilder in the past? Or have we just stopped noticing, literarily?

Something tells me that David Harsanyi can answer Megan McCardle's question.

(By the way, note the reference to AMC's Mad Men series in the comments.)

Rachel Lucas on the joys of Christmas shopping at the local shopping mall.

Tough for me to argue with this gentleman's approach to Christmas catalogs--or the lack thereof.

Update: "This originated with James Dobson's Focus on the Family, and I saw it on the blog of a former Penthouse editor. The internet is a strange place." I doubt J.B.S. Haldane would argue!

...Or the sterile lack thereof.

(Say, I wonder if American Thinker's Jack Kemp knows Pajamas' Bill Bradley, in the apparently growing ranks of eponymous new media punditry?)

Kathy Shaidle writes:

Guy who used to be married to supermodel, then looked in the mirror and said to himself, "Hell, I'm Billy Joel, I can do better" releases anti-war song called "Christmas in Fallujah".

Here's what Christmas in Fallujah will actually be like, as opposed to the "Christmas in Fallujah" of Billy Joel's menopausal multi-millionaire daydreams.

Billy would have been better off if he was collecting royalties on the number of rewrites of "We Didn't Start The Fire" appearing in YouTube videos this year.

Three updates on the ongoing War On Christmas: First up, Tom Blumer explores when the C-word is acceptable for use by leftwing journalists:

It seems beyond dispute that there is a strong bias against using the word “Christmas” to describe not only the shopping season, as noted above, but also events, parades, and festivals that happen during the Christmas season. There is, however, a bit of an exception — “Christmas” is a word that is much more acceptable to use when “Scrooge” employers are letting people go.

Meanwhile, Mark Steyn explains what two recent newsworthy incidents say about the cultures that produced them:

East is east, and west is west, and in both we take offense at anything: Santas saying "Ho ho ho," teddy bears called Mohammed. And yet the difference is very telling: The now-annual Santa lawsuits in the "war on Christmas" and the determination to abolish even such anodyne expressions of faith as the Pledge of Allegiance are assaults on the very possibility of a common culture. By contrast, the teddy bear rubbish is a crude demonstration of cultural muscle intended to cow and intimidate. When east meets west, when offended Muslims find themselves operating in Western nations, they discover that both techniques are useful: Some march in the streets, Khartoum-style, calling for the pope to be beheaded, others use the mechanisms of the West's litigious, perpetual grievance culture to harass opponents into silence.

Perhaps somewhere in Sydney there's a woman who's genuinely offended by hearing Santa say "ho ho ho" just as those New Hampshire atheists claim to be genuinely offended by the Pledge of Allegiance. But their complaints are frivolous and decadent, and more determined groups are using the patterns they've established to shut down debate on things we should be talking about. The ability to give and take offense is what separates free societies from Sudan.

Finally, Jules Crittenden writes, "Surgeon General to Santa: Lose It, Fat Boy!"

But isn't that rather culturally insensitive of the Surgeon General? Not to mention out of his jurisdiction, unless the US is claiming the North Pole as our 51st state. And even if we were, wouldn't Santa be grandfathered, due to his centuries of living up there?

(Don't miss this comment by one of Jules' readers, which puts the Cold Civil War and its northern front into sharp perspective.)

Related: Which stores dare to use the C-word? "The Attack on Christmas 2007" lists the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on the retail front of the American overculture's War On Christmas.

Update: And speaking of taking No Offense just smidge too far, just click.

iYule.TV puts a virtual fireplace in your pocket.

As Orrin Judd writes, "Doesn't this need to be a streaming simulcast?"

'Tis the season when the front lines in the Cold Civil War temporarily become a bit more visible to civilian observers. Even as Rasmussen reports...

As the holiday season begins, 67% of American adults like stores to use the phrase “Merry Christmas” in their seasonal advertising rather than “Happy Holidays.” A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 26% prefer the Happy Holidays line.

...Thanksgiving is slowly becoming another Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name, as the left's efforts to further atomize traditional American culture proceed apace.

Jeff Jarvis explores "The real media consolidation: Google":

Bottom line: Google controls nearly 40 percent of online advertising.

Now pair that news with the folding of TimesSelect. Consumers, as we used to be called, won’t support media and journalism with their money. Advertising will. We will become entirely dependent on advertising. And what happens when Google controls the majority of online ad revenue in this country? They’re headed there, for as a TechCrunch commenter points out, Google’s online ad revenue and share of revenue are growing faster than online advertising as a whole.

On the one hand, we should be grateful to Google for enabling the support of much new media. On the other hand, we should fear teh vice in which Google holds our privates. That’s where media power is consolidating — not in old conglomerates (some of which now depend for a good bit of revenue on who? — on Google.)

And yet, for a company involved in as many diverse projects as Google, Zombie notes that it's definition of "diversity" is awfully skewed in one direction:

Google is completely infected by the multicultural bug, and that means they’ll honor anything that isn’t part of the “traditional” culture or power structure: American, Christian, conservative, and so on. I’m neither Christian nor do I consider myself a conservative, but even I bristle at Google’s hubris.

Read the whole thing.

One of Charles Johnson's readers get the standard form letter that Google's been sending out every year since at least 2005 regarding their lack of a Memorial Day splash page, despite having pages commemorating World Water Day, and the birthdays of Edvard Munch, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Percival Lowell, and Ray Charles. (Though the international celebrity with a huge fanbase born on December 25th remains oddly unnamed each year by Google...)

Because the art designers at Google seem remarkably stumped by the unique design challenge that is Memorial Day, Zombietime is soliciting reader help.

Zombie is requesting that contest entrants keep things as tasteful and reverent as possible. Call me unnecessarily cynical and churlish, but something tells me though, whatever they design just won't make the cut with Google.

Tom McMahon flashes back to his 2005 post to remind us:

The logo above is from the year 2000, but for the past 4 years Google has snubbed Easter. While ignoring Easter this year, Google has had the time to celebrate such Major Holidays as World Water Day and International Women's Day.

Like Christmas, Easter is well on its way to becoming yet another Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

Update: Related thoughts here.

He hits the beach--literally--in India!

Students join sand sculpture artists to create a 30-meter-long (100-foot-long) Santa Claus sculpture on the Puri golden beach, in the Indian state of Orissa on the eve of Christmas, Sunday, Dec. 24, 2006. Though Hindus and Muslims comprise the majority of the population in India, Christmas is celebrated with much fanfare.

As TigerHawk writes, "The photograph and official wire service caption below are additional evidence that India is the 'natural' ally of the United States in the war against radical Islam. Also, it's really cool".

Surf's up, Santa, Dude!

The Media Research Center has a pretty good scorecard for who stands where this year in the War For Christmas.

Posting will no doubt be a bit sparse on Christmas day. In the meantime, let me take this opportunity to wish everyone:

A Very Merry Christmas!

Update:

Welcome, and Merry Christmas, to Hugh Hewitt and his listeners!

Meanwhile, Neo-Neocon looks back on "'The Blogger's Night Before Christmas".

More: Merry Insta-Christmas!

Floyd Brown reminds us that the left's assault on Christmas isn't a new development.

Update: Via The Anchoress, here's the newest low in the War On Christmas, courtesy of, not surprisingly, CBS. Compare and contrast with CBS's mid-1960s Christmas fair.

Last year at Thangsgiving, I posted some thoughts on Rough Creek Lodge, an upscale hunting lodge and resort on 11,000 acres in Glen Rose, Texas, about 90 minutes outside of Dallas.

As I was just telling Tammy Bruce and her radio listeners, my wife and I thought it would be a fun place to spend Christmas, and it certainly is--but blogging may be at a reduced pace over the weekend.

The two breaking stories today are this truck crash, made more suspicious because of its cargo, and the Duke lacrosse case, with the D.A. dropping the main charge of rape. As I mentioned to Tammy, the timing of it--on a Friday afternoon, the weekend before Christmas--seems to imply that his office was attempting to minimize the damage to Mike Nifong's reputation as much as they possibly could.

Will the remaining two charges against the Duke players be dropped during another quiet period in the news cycle--say, the weekend before New Years? Or will Nifong continue to try to string this out as long as possible?

Tough to argue with Pajamas HQ's assessment of this video captioned by Scrappleface's Scott Ott:

"Nativity Scene Stolen by Abortion Clinic Worker Returned by Police" (!)

(Via The Brothers Judd.)

I can't say that this is very surprising:

In a new Business & Media Institute analysis, “Good Morning America” was the least likely of the network morning shows to refer to Christmas, mentioning it only about 31 percent of the time.

While retailers were taken to task for celebrating a generic holiday last year and are instead marketing a very Merry Christmas this year, journalists have not joined the Christmas party.

After pressure last year from religious groups many retailers made changes this year to welcome the Christmas spirit. Wal-Mart, Kohl’s, Sears, Macy’s and Target are among the businesses recognizing Christmas this year, according to a November 30 article in the National Catholic Register.

But those in the media business are being much more Scroogelike. They preferred to use “holiday” or “season” when talking about Christmastime by a 3-1 margin between November 22-29, around the time the traditional Christmas shopping season began.

A breakdown of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” NBC’s “Today” show, and CBS’s “Early Show” resulted in nearly 300 references to the Christmas season during the week of November 22-29. Only 75 of them included the word “Christmas.” (The tally included only the comments made by reporters and anchors. Not included in the count were onscreen graphics or formal names.)

CBS’s “Early Show” mentioned “Christmas” the most often with 37.7 percent of the references being holiday-specific. NBC’s “Today” fell between ABC and CBS, saying “Christmas” 35.4 percent of the time.

Breaking the spirit of Leftivus in the overculture is still an uphill struggle.

"That baby born in the manger prevails. He must know someone pretty high up", Tammy Bruce writes.

...In Seattle and England.

They're a delicate lot, these new puritans.

Clive Davis asks, "A question for religiously-minded film fans: why is the new movie, The Nativity Story doing so badly when Mel Gibson’s version of The Passion did so well?"

Maybe because it didn't arrive with such incredible controversy, and with a media superstar associated with it. (Remember the early, strange stories that began emerging from the set that Mel was spending his own money to shoot a movie entirely in Aramaic? And then the firestorm the week of The Passion's release?)

All of that made The Passion go from being just another religious film to a cause celebre that everyone, pro or con, wanted to see to decide for themselves what the fuss was all about. And it sounds like Gibson is doing his damndest to recreate that same controversy with Apocalypto--even if the hype has little to do with the film itself, according to Michael Medved:

Perhaps Gibson is so eager to transcend the humiliation of his drunk driving incident, and to bury the lingering suspicions that “The Passion” (despite its huge commercial success) was a right-wing, hate-filled screed, that he’s saying stupid things that he believes will endear him to the “progressive” Hollywood establishment.

Clearly, the film (with dialogue in the ancient Yucatec language, with subtitles) represents a major risk and he needs great reviews to get the attention required for decent box office performance. By cooking up some preposterous lefty interpretation of Mayan collapse (is the big chieftain with the body scarring and the elaborate tattoos and the distended ears and the carved piece of jade in place of his nose supposed to represent George W. Bush?) Gibson may be trying to position his adrenalin-soaked, breathlessly paced chase picture as an “important, daring” message movie that indicts the U.S.

Even if there’s no basis whatever in the substance of the film for Mel’s alarmist, we’re-all-guilty-and-doomed commentary about US society, the attempt to fabricate a political subtext for a visceral, straight-ahead action-adventure may prove an effective strategy. The positioning of a relentlessly fast-moving thriller set in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula more than five hundred years ago as some searing, timely indictment of “over consumption” and “political corruption” in Bush-era USA, may force some high brow critics to take “Apocalypto” more seriously than they would without the pretentious preaching surround it’s release. There’s another advantage concerning the movie’s distribution overseas: Gibson’s comments will help to produce the warm reception in France that’s all-but-guaranteed for any work plausibly classified as anti-American.

Anti-American and anti-Semitic? Mel will really be bathed in the French Ego Juice!

Update: Thoughts on the film itself, here.

Television long ago replaced the fireplace as the central gathering place in the American home, which adds to the layers of McLuhanesque irony hidden in the annual Yule Log video. Fortunately, the spotlight shines even brighter on the world's most famous log this year, as The New York Daily News reports:

Generations have sat raptly in front of the television on Christmas Day, mesmerized by a holiday classic: "The Yule Log."

Now, for the first time in the storied log's 40-year history, secrets of the burning timber will be revealed.

WPIX/Ch. 11 presents "The WPIX Yule Log: A Log's Life," Dec. 23 at 7 p.m.

Hopefully they'll put it up on YouTube in time for Christmas. In the meantime, the above clip should help get you in the mood, though you'll have to keep hitting play after its short run, rather than waiting for it to automatically loop.

Or something like that--Ed Morrissey reviews The Nativity Story; Govindini Murty explains why it's so controversial in the Second City.

Mary Katharine Ham explores how we arrived at The Holiday That Dare Not Speak its Name:

James Lileks' Bleat from a couple of Christmases (oh no, he said it!) back is also worth reading for its historical perspective, as he rummaged through his newspaper's Christmas (he did it again!) archives over the course of the 20th century.

Update: It sounds like St. Albans, North Carolina has a particularly impressive Leftivus display this time of year.

...But you can't take him out of the actor who brought him to life so vividly, by making actor and character appear inseparable (not to mention insufferable). Danny DeVito, who hasn't had a hit movie since, arguably L.A. Confidential nearly a decade ago, really knows how to spread the holiday cheer in promoting his latest film, Deck The Halls:

Danny DeVito seemed drunk when he went on an anti-Bush tirade on ABC’s The View on Wednesday. DeVito recounted how he last visited the White House during the Clinton years, warmly noting that "the place was, had that kind of Clinton feeling, you know," before denigrating President Bush as "numb nuts" (or something like that — ABC bleeped over the last part of that word).

DeVito then began what was supposed to be mimicry of Bush, making a variety of weird sounds and facial expressions. It’s impossible to really capture DeVito’s performance in words (he’d admitted he’d been up partying all night with George Clooney), so I’ve posted a short video of one of his more explosive moments. [Click over to view the clips--Ed]

After his Bush-bashing, DeVito then asked the panel what they thought about "the hat trick last week — Rumsfeld, the House and the Senate," referring to the Democrats’ election victories and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld’s stepping down. DeVito announced how he reacted to the news: "I took my clothes off."

Now that's how to sell a family-friendly Christmas movie to its Red State target audience!

The Chicago Tribune notes, "Stores revert to 'Merry Christmas'--Wal-Mart leads way, backing off from 'happy holidays'".

That's great to see, and it's a direct response to the amount of complaints that filtered up through the Blogosphere and online forums last year. It's also further proof of something that Jonah Goldberg wrote last year, which the midterms confirmed:

Galloping toward the center is nothing new in American politics. The parties have always regressed to the mean. The center of gravity is in the, uh, center. What's changed is that the center has — finally — been moving an eensy bit to the right.

And perhaps it's also a small sign that the 1970s might be slowly--ever, ever so slowly--be receding into the distance.

Hopefully many more brick and mortar chains will follow suit. As I wrote last year, there's absolutely no excuse for any large Internet retailer for not doing this, of course.

Update: Mary Katharine Ham spots another difference between Christmas retailing this year and last.

Hey, at least he's finally come clean on the subject--and on The Tonight Show to boot. I have to give him points for that...

(Via Hot Air.)

Michael Ledeen takes the pulse of religious hatred amongst America's Blue State elites:

We’re living at a moment when hatred of religion and of religious groups is gathering momentum. Perhaps this is a reaction to the global religious revival that has been underway for two generations, but whatever its roots, it is now so common that hardly anyone notices (except, paradoxically, when it’s directed against Muslims). Some attention was given to the singularly intolerant action taken by the local regime in St. Paul, Minnesota, barring public displays of bunnies during the Eastern season. And then, to the near-total indifference of the journalistic hunting pack, in late March the San Francisco City Council, angered by Catholic opposition to gay adoption, unanimously approved a resolution that read:

It is an insult to all San Franciscans when a foreign country, like the Vatican, meddles with and attempts to negatively influence this great city’s existing and established customs and traditions, such as the right of same-sex couples to adopt and care for children in need.

One could almost see the torch flicker at John F. Kennedy’s gravesite across the Potomac, and one had a great impulse to yell very loudly in the fine words of Oriana Fallaci, who lies in pain in Manhattan, snarling back at the cancer that has taken over her body:

How come that, in a country where 85 percent of the citizens say to be Christian, so few rebel to the ludicrous offensive which is going on against Christmas?!? How come that so few protest when your Caviar Left speaks about abolishing Christmas holiday, Christmas-trees, Christmas-songs, the same expressions Merry Christmas and Happy Christmas?!?

That’s the sort of anger that comes from a self-described "religious atheist" like Oriana, who knows that if anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism spread again, it is only a matter of time before they will come for people like her.

As indeed they have already, with their legal briefs and their anti-hate-speech codes, dragging her off to the latest version of the Inquisition for the sin of apostasy against the Church of Political Correctness. San Francisco, under cover of "existing and established customs and traditions," bans free speech. The little reichs of San Francisco, St. Paul, and Paris ban free religion. And "top professors" at Harvard and Chicago take off after the Jews.

No wonder Ayman al Zawahiri and his buddy, the Ayatollah Khamenei, think we’re going to be an easy prey.

Read the whole thing.

Last year, we noted the left's attacks on Christmas and even Halloween. (Can't offend those sensitive Wiccans!)

Yet another traditional holiday with origins in Christianity is falling under attack: appropriately for February 14th, Registan, Charles Johnson, and Tim Blair look at Islam's war against Valentine's Day.

Google is impersonating Austin Power's Dr. Evil, according to the Riding Sun blog:

I can't seem to find the link for this one; I think it was on a Rooters website somewhere. But I just read a shocking news report: In the wake of its decision to censor its Chinese search results, Google is changing its corporate motto from the original "Don't be evil."

The new motto, according to unnamed company sources, is: "Be semi-evil. Be quasi-evil. Be the margarine of evil. Be the Diet Coke of evil — just one calorie; not evil enough!"

With its customized splash page, Google is celebrating Chinese New Year today (as are my neighbors--a fair amount of fireworks have been going off since last night); too bad Christmas and Easter are considered passé by the Diet Coke of evil.

Mary Katharine Ham and La Shawn Barber write about the very recent--as in 1966--origins of Kwanzaa. Ham describes a news story on Kwanzaa cut in half by an editor who decided it to play it as safe as the New York Times covering Woody Allen or John Kerry:

I was asked to do a story on a local Kwanzaa celebration when I worked at a newspaper a couple years ago. Between second grade and then, I had figured out that Kwanzaa was created about the same time as Nancy Sinatra's career. But I didn't know about Karenga until I started Googling.

Then I found the Front Page Magazine article linked above, written by Paul Mulshine, a columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger. After I clicked on it, I almost wished I hadn't.

I had planned to do the dutiful, fluffy Kwanzaa story. I had planned a sprinkling of history, some winning photos of 6-year-olds, and quotes lauding the act of gourd-painting as a path to cultural awareness. I had it planned.

Paul Mulshine threw off my plan, and I knew I was in trouble. In trouble because I couldn't, in good conscience, leave all the bad stuff about [Ron] Karenga out of a story about the holiday he created. In trouble because I knew this would cause problems with my editors.

I called Mulshine, who was nice enough to do an interview with me and send me some of his sources, so that I could have some back-up when my editors asked me about it. I called Karenga and left a message on his machine, but never heard back from him.

I interviewed the teachers and students involved with the Kwanzaa celebration. I got all the gourd-painting quotes I needed, but I also asked what they knew about Karenga and his unsavory past. They knew nothing about it. I asked if they knew why Kwanzaa used Swahili terms when most American slaves came from thousands of miles away from anywhere Swahili was spoken. They didn't know. Many of them didn't know the holiday was created in California in 1966, just as I hadn't.

In the end, I compromised. I wrote 10 inches of fluffy holiday story. The childrens' Kwanzaa artwork was beautiful and deserved to be spotlighted, no matter what kind of man Karenga was. But I also wrote 10 inches on Karenga. Nothing too graphic. I didn't get into the specifics of the torture. I didn't list every one of his misdeeds. But I thought a little of that was important to the story, especially since it seemed no one knew anything about it.

The next day, I picked up the paper. My 20-inch story had become 10 inches long overnight. Can you guess which 10 inches they cut?

This paper never cut for space. It rarely edited a word I wrote. As a result, a 10-inch cut was conspicuous, to say the least. And indefensible. And in this case, expected.

My editor and I had a civil conversation about it, the conclusion of which was something along the lines of, "well, you just can't write stuff like that. Just because...you just can't."

Just another mile-marker in my journey out of the newspaper business.

And another mile-marker on the road to the Blogosphere--and beyond.

Mary Catherine Ham looks at Google's riduculously subtle Non-Demoninational Winter Solstitial December 25th splash page greeting:

I'm going to get just a little "War on Christmas" on you. I didn't want to be bitter-blogger yesterday, so I left it alone, but did anyone see the Google logo yesterday? Here's what they gave us to commemorate the birth of Christ and the first day of Hannukah.

As a friend of mine said, "because everyone knows the true meaning of Christmas is that cats and mice should work together to industrialize." Heh. Yep, I'm pretty sure that's in there-- Book of Jerry, Chapter 5. Look it up.

It's not that I'm angry about this, but I do feel like Google goes from looking sensitive to looking downright silly when it just pretends Christmas isn't there at all, while commemorating other holidays. Just silly.

Or, maybe they're just going for a really subtle "lion lay down with the lamb" thing. Very subtle.

Of course, Google could have let its users choose what they'd like to see on December 25th.

Posting will no doubt be a bit sparse on Christmas day, and any posts on Sunday will appear under this one. In the meantime, let me take this opportunity to wish everyone:

A Very Merry Christmas!

Color me unsurprised:

This isn't the first year religious groups have taken on retailers who say "Happy Holidays'' instead of "Merry Christmas.'' But a retail analyst says it's been one of the angriest.

Britt Beemer, the chairman of the consumer research firm America's Research Group, says a growing number of consumers are aggravated when stores instruct their employees not to say "Merry Christmas.'' A survey by the group found that a quarter of those polled said they'd walk out of a store that gives the more neutral greeting. Those surveyed also say retailers aren't spending as much on lavish Christmas displays as they used to.

This year, the American Family Association gathered more than 500,000 signatures asking Target to include Christmas in its promotions. Stores such as Sears and Wal-Mart faced boycotts.

Big business is never going to appease the left; it might as well try to please the majority of its customers.

There's a very simple solution for online retailers, of course.

AP reports:

The congregation of First Emmanuel Baptist Church drove from Baton Rouge, Houston and other points far and wide on Christmas, then walked past collapsed buildings and piles of storm wreckage to worship in their old church for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.

"This means everything. We've come home," said Lila Southall, the minister's wife. "My house is gone but I'm still home for Christmas."

Incidentally, tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the much deadlier Indian Ocean tsunami.

Update: "Asia marks one year to the day since tsunami hit, sweeping away 216,000 lives".

Two from the United Federation of Planets: first up, remember this one, from the early, funny years of Saturday Night Live?

And second, this was a geeky little bonbon I wrote for the last page of the December 2004 issue of Electronic House magazine:

Read More »

Mark Steyn has, I think, the definitive look at The War On Christmas, placed into the larger context of the left's War On Culture:

One December a few years back, I was in Santa Claus, Indiana, and went to the Post Office – a popular destination thanks to its seasonal postmark. “Merry Christmas!” I said provocatively.

But Postmistress Sandy Colyon was ready for me. “A week ago,” she said, “I’d have had to say ‘Happy Holidays’, but we’ve been given a special dispensation from the Postmaster-General allowing us to say ‘Merry Christmas’. So Merry Christmas!”

That’s “Christmas” at the dawn of the third millennium – a word you have to get a special memo from head office authorizing the use thereof. In America, most executive honchos would rather not take the risk, instructing the staff to eschew any mention of the C-word in favour of “Happy Holidays!” – the all-purpose inoffensive greeting that covers Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Eid, the Third Wednesday after Ramadan, hippy-dippy solstice worship, West Bank Suicide Bomber Appreciation Day and any other festive occasion you’ve lined up for the general vicinity of late 2005/early 2006.

For US columnists, the end-of-year column bemoaning the fanatical efforts to expunge all Christmas traditions from public life has become an annual Christmas tradition in itself. And, happily, there’s no shortage of contenders for silliest Santa suit. Last Christmas, to pluck at random from just one state, the annual trip by one New Jersey school district to see Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was cancelled after threats of legal action. At another New Jersey school, the policy on not singing any songs mentioning God, Christ, angels, etc, was expanded to prohibit instrumental performances of music that would mention God if any singers were around to sing the words. So you can’t do “Silent Night” as a piano solo or Handel’s Messiah even if you junk the hallelujahs.

But let’s not obsess on New Jersey’s litigious secularists. In Plano, Texas, in the heart of God-fearin’ Bush country, parents were instructed not to bring red and green plates and napkins for the school’s “winter” parties, as red and green are colours with strong Christmas connotations and thus culturally oppressive. In Massachusetts, in the heart of Bush-fearin’ country, the mayor of Somerville issued an apology for accidentally referring to the town “holiday party” as a C-------- party.

This year the Christmas crowd pushed back, complaining to Wal-Mart and other big retailers about what’s become a perversely ostentatious aversion to the C word. The malls still have to sell stuff which at least prevents them retreating too far into the more extreme manifestations of cultural self-abasement. At the average American schoolhouse, no such restraints exist and the average “holiday concert” is now an hour of torture for even the most self-consciously tolerant parents, forced to endure a mélange of cat-strangling multiculti dirges. Jesus, Mary and Joseph long ago got the heave-ho from the grade school, but the great secular trinity of Santa, Rudolph and Frosty aren’t faring much better. “Frosty The Snowman” and “Jingle Bells” are offensive to those of a non-Frosty or non-jingly persuasion: they’re code for traditional notions of Christmas. The basic rule of thumb is: Anything you enjoy singing will probably get you sued. At my children's school, like most others, the holiday concert’s “celebrate diversity” anthems are parceled out entirely randomly: one year you might get the Hannukah song, the next the traditional Hutu disemboweling chant. But the thing to remember is: it would be offensive to inflict “Deck The Halls” or “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” on any hypothetical Hutu in attendance, but it’s not offensive to inflict hot Hutu hits on bewildered moppets.

Read More »

In a rare Friday night/Saturday morning post (depending upon which time zone you're in), James Lileks has an MP3 of the NBC radio news broadcast for December 25th, 1944. There's only a brief mention of Christmas in the middle of it, otherwise, it's "Bad news, straight, no chaser", as James writes. But there's no moral equivalence, no attempt to portray one man's Nazi as another man's freedom fighter. No attempt to portray our breaking of the Germans' Enigma codes as This Week's Crime of the Century by the president.

In other words, you know the broadcaster is rooting for America to win the war, unlike much of today's media.

(Man, I sound as grim as NBC's announcer. Fortunately, Lileks has much more Christmassy stuff on his site, between today's and yesterday's posts.)

Karl Rove implicated in identity leak scandal.

(This was the reporter who broke the case...)

Joseph Bottum writes beautiful Christmas prose:

Just because something is sentimentalized does not mean that it is untrue—or even that we are wrong to layer it over with sentiment. The distaste for sentimentality begins as a rebellion against false feeling, but it finishes as a rebellion against all feeling. It starts as a plain-speaking person’s refusal to be deceived by a coat of paint, and it ends as a rude person’s refusal to use paint at all. It opens as a wise man’s ability to point out the fool’s gold, and it concludes as a fool’s inability to point out the real gold.

For on this point, we dare not be mistaken: Christmas is the real gold, and all the sentimentality with which we gild a thing already golden, all the evergreens with which we decorate a thing already evergreen, all the holly boughs with which we mark a thing already holy—all these are not some vain attempt to mask the truth. They are, rather, the tribute that sentiment will always try to pay to true things, on the same principle by which a wife chooses the prettiest wrapping paper for her husband’s most expensive gift on Christmas morning. What need had the King of Kings—what need had a newborn child in a cattle shed—for the awful oblation of frankincense and myrrh laid before him by the Wise Men? And yet those men were wise, as we are wisest only in our greatest foolishness.

Something in the Christmas season rightly tempts us to such sentimental gilding, just as something in the Christmas season tempts us—awk!—to the chaotic chiasmus of this kind of fake-Chestertonian prose, every sentence an aphorism eased along by alliteration’s artful aid, until the words clot up in a giant Christmas pudding that subsides with a half-baked sigh as it cools upon the table. “I’m sick of Chesterton,” F. Scott Fitzgerald has Amory Blaine complain in This Side of Paradise. From January to November, the style of G.K. Chesterton may go down easy. But around Christmas, while the streets jingle with Salvation Army bells and the elevators jangle with Muzaked carols, it’s just too much. Just too much.

And yet…well, and yet, how are we to help ourselves? Every one of those jingling bells and jangling carols awakens some remembrance half gone, half recalled, haunting in the middle distance of the mind that had thought itself too mature to be moved again by merely memory.

(Tip of the holiday Trilby to Jonathan Last.)

Big round-up of where we stand in this front of the culture war, over at
Pajamas HQ.

For more on this topic, click here, and just keep scrolling.

And be sure to check out Mark Steyn's moving look at "White Christmas" and its author, Irving Berlin.

Newsmax reports:

American Family Association (AFA) has announced that it is ending its boycott of Target because the company has announced that it will include Christmas in their advertising and in-store promotions.

"We are pleased to learn that Target has heard our concerns and decided to use Christmas in their advertising and marketing efforts. Since the company has responded positively, we see no need to continue the boycott,” said AFA Chairman Donald E. Wildmon.

Nearly 700,000 people had signed up to join the Target boycott at afa.net on the AFA website. Wildmon said that many companies have decided to drop their ban on Christmas.

In their official statement, Target said: "Over the course of the next few weeks, our advertising, marketing and merchandising will become more specific to the holiday that is approaching – referring directly to holidays like Christmas and Hanukkah. For example, you will see reference to Christmas in select television commercials, circulars and in-store signage.

"We do not have a policy or intention of excluding the word ‘Christmas’ from our holiday advertising or marketing. Christmas images and themes have been used in our advertising and marketing in the past and you will continue to see these images and themes in the future.”

"We think you will see a different approach next year,” Wildmon said.

Sounds good to me; more here.

(Of course, for online retailers, the answer is even simpler.)

The White House sent out "Happy Holiday" cards recently; Pajamas Media and The Anchoress have some thoughts and links. While I can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment, I do agree with Jim Geraghty when he writes:

Look – the reason many of us cringe at “Happy Holidays” is that we don’t want anyone to feel social pressure or a stigma to change their personal choice or preference of what to say during this time of year. (Renaming Christmas trees to "Holiday Trees" is just silly; Hanukah and Kwanzaa don’t feature a big tree with a star or angel on top. It would be every bit as silly to call the big candelabra with nine candles the “Holiday Menorah.”)

If you want to say, “Merry Christmas,” say “Merry Christmas.” If you want to say, “Happy Holidays,” say, “Happy Holidays.” Ditto Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Indian New Year, Boxing Day, Beethoven’s Birthday, or whatever. You can’t offend me with an offer of goodwill; and anyone who does get offended really, really needs to switch to decaf.

However, if George W. Bush is writing “Happy Holidays” on his cards, I doubt he’s capitulating to social pressure or folding under the stern glare of the ACLU or Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It’s his card - well, the RNC paid for it - and it’s his call. I’m not going to draw my sword over a card that features the presidential pups instead of a manger.

And I'm sorry, Bush “claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one?” What is this, excommunication based on Christmas cards?

It strikes me that there are some conservatives out there who were completely willing to give George W. Bush a pass for huge spending hikes, signing campaign finance reform, Harriet Miers, but putting “Happy Holidays” on his cards constitutes a deal-breaker.

And that's pretty silly.

Update: Orrin Judd looks at the White House's Hanukkah Menorah Lighting Ceremony, which Scott Johnson of Power Line (who attended) describes as an evening to remember.

Another Update: In other holiday-related news, PunditGuy has video of The Ultimate Christmas Light Show.

Our post from this weekend on allowing online customers to choose the Holiday greeting of their choice made this week's Willisms' Carnival Of Classiness line-up. And the other posts he chose are equally well worth your time.

Orrin Judd looks at "The Christmas classic that almost wasn't", and reminds us that in some respects, television executives have changed very little since 1965.

Update: "And, Lo, the Network Execs Were Sore Afraid".

Glenn Reynolds links to the wisdom of that sage philospher, Foamy the Squirrel. Foamy makes great points, but his colorful language does not make him, shall we say, safe for the whole family. Or at work.

Update: "Look. Calling a Christmas tree a Holiday tree is like calling a Menorah a candlestick holder".

Given that so many one-man Weblogs have optional skins the users can chose to change the color scheme and graphics, one way for online merchants such as Amazon and eBay to bypass the whole Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays controversy is to simply offer a choice of greetings for the month of December.

These sites use cookies to keep track of each customer--for example, whenever I log onto Amazon it says (paraphrasing) "Hi Ed, Welcome Back! (If you're not Ed, click here.)" So why not put them to work here? Default to "Happy Holidays" and then allow each customer to choose if he or she wants to change it to "Merry Christmas", "Happy Hanukah", "Happy Kwanza", "Happy Eid", or heck, even "Happy Festivus". And then have a "Happy TYPE HOLIDAY OF YOUR CHOICE HERE" box for anyone who celibrates a day other than the previous listings to fill in.

If individual Weblogs can personalize the appearance of their sites, this sort of thing should be a no-brainer for large operations with dedicated coding teams. It seems like an easy way to add personalized service, make each customer feel welcome, and avoid being written up in these sorts of articles. It also allows for more personalized gift/shopping suggestions, and creates additional demographic data about the site's customers.

So what say, fellas?

Update: Welcome Willisms readers--it's great to make the Carnival of the Classiness again! (Click here to find our first nominated post.)

Last year, shortly after a relatively obscure holiday celebrated on the 25th day of this month by a small but significant minority of approximately 95 percent of Americans, I wrote:

Last year, I felt that Christmas was fading in popularity. This year, I feel a bit more reassured. Next year? It's about 340 days too soon to tell of course, but it will be interesting to see if stores and government, but local and national, have learned anything from the outcry this year.

USA Today reports that some folks have gotten the message:

NEW YORK — The word "Christmas," nearly absent in marketing by major retailers in recent years, has been quietly revived by some stores. Retail expert Jim Lucas says they are responding to consumers' desire to make the holidays more personal — whether they observe Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa.

Retailers such as Macy's are acknowledging Christmas rather than the generic "holiday."

"They are saying this has become very commercial and they want to reclaim the holiday season and make it relevant," says Lucas, head of strategic planning at ad agency Draft Worldwide.

Chains also may be responding to a push by groups such as The Catholic League and American Family Association (AFA) against a generic "winter holiday."

The AFA cited 10 retailers (Kroger, Dell, Target, OfficeMax, Walgreens, Sears, Staples, Lowe's, J.C. Penney and Best Buy) for omitting Christmas in ads. It urges shoppers to go where Christmas is recognized.

"If you are going to make your earnings on the year because of Christmas, why should you be ashamed to call it Christmas?" asks AFA President Tim Wildmon. "People don't buy Thanksgiving gifts."

Lowe's got special note for hanging "holiday tree" banners on lots at its 1,175 stores. It pulled them after complaints. "We wanted to call a Christmas tree what it is," says spokeswoman Chris Ahearn.

The Catholic League says it scored a victory when it pushed Wal-Mart to have a Christmas category on its website, which had Kwanzaa and Hanukkah gift sections.

Other chains giving Christmas a nod:

• Federated Department Stores — owner of Macy's and Bloomingdale's — is making sure its Christmas message is heard after consumer backlash last year over a supposed policy forbidding employees to wish shoppers "Merry Christmas."

A "Merry Christmas" ad thanking shoppers and employees is planned. The theme at Macy's New York store: Christmas in the City. Macy's TV ad features a big band tune mentioning Christmas.

"What we are doing is communicating our position," says spokesman Jim Sluzewski. "We never had a policy not to say 'Merry Christmas,' but clearly this is an issue of concern with a lot of people."

The article then goes a little off the rails:

Ads for Dillard's department stores say: "Discover Christmas. Discover Dillard's." But the regional chain says that is not a political statement. "We do not believe it is our place as a retailer to politicize the season," says spokeswoman Julie Bull. "The sentiment expressed certainly applies to the other holidays celebrated this time of year, as well."

Boy, that just popped out of left field, huh? Other than the implications of Rod Dreher's "Godless Party" article, who is accusing anyone of politicizing Christmas? It's the opposite--the banishment of the word that politicizes the holiday. More from USA Today:

Christmas songs and trees are two of the things Victoria's Secret won't be bashful about in its lingerie show airing Tuesday on CBS. "The day is called Christmas. ... It all gears to Dec. 25," says Ed Razek, chief marketing officer.

Even so, Draft's Lucas says not to expect nativities or menorahs in ads. "The pendulum has swung a little away from PC. But if marketers get too specific or too religious, they'd be walking a weird line."

That's fine--just the continued revival of the word, after its long slow erasure from the American media and retail scene is great to see--and it wouldn't have happened with the Internet and its ability for everyday folks to first compare notes and then band together to shout out when they see something that's gone awry.

A rie? A roast beef on rie?--Ed Well, leave one out for Santa. Maybe with a bottle of milk. Or a bottle of something else...

Kevin McCullough writes:

We are excited to be launching the opportunity today...between now and Christmas we are asking you to send the ACLU direct "MerryChristmas" cards.

And we aren't talking about these generic "happy holiday" (meaning nothing) type of cards...

Go get as "Christmas" a Christmas card as you can find... something that says.. "Joy To The World", "For Unto Us A Child Is Born", but at least "Merry Christmas", put some of your own thoughts into it, sign it respectfully and zip it off in the mail to

ACLU
"Wishing You Merry Christmas"
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004

On a side note we are developing an E-Card that you will also be able to send. BUT there will be no effect like actually sending a physical card to the office. MuscleHead guidelines apply - please be kind, even cheerful in sending the card. Trust me - kindness will produce more smoke out of their ears than anything untoward you could think of anyway...

Indeed, to coin an adverb.

(Via Michelle Malkin.)

Denny Hastert renames the capital's "Holiday Tree":

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has told federal officials that the lighted, decorated tree on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol -- known in recent years as the "Holiday Tree" -- should be renamed the "Capitol Christmas Tree," as it was called until the late 1990s.

The Capitol's senior landscape architect confirmed the name switch yesterday for The Washington Times.

"It was known as the 'Holiday Tree' for several years and just recently was changed back to the 'Capitol Christmas Tree.' This was a directive from the speaker," said Capitol architect Matthew Evans.

"The speaker believes a Christmas tree is a Christmas tree, and it is as simple as that," said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for the Illinois Republican.

The Capitol tree, traditionally overshadowed by the White House's "National Christmas Tree," was renamed a "holiday tree" several years ago, according to the Capitol Architect's offices, in an effort to acknowledge the other holidays of Kwanzaa and Hanukkah -- although no one seemed to know exactly when the name was changed or by whom.

Calling a Christmas tree a Christmas tree has become a politically charged prospect in jurisdictions across the country -- from Boston to Sacramento and in dozens of communities in between.

"It's a growing problem," said Jared N. Leland, spokesman and legal counsel for the Becket Fund, a District-based legal and educational institute. "Celebrating the season with Christmas trees ... and leaving them named 'Christmas' is simply recognizing the religious nature of people. Christmas should be able to be called Christmas."

(Via Mary Katharine Ham.)

Business Week looks at "Cyber Monday, Marketing Myth":

Do a Google search on "Cyber Monday," and you get as many as 779,000 results. Not a bad haul for a term that was created just a week and a half ago to describe the jump in online shopping activity following the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. While Black Friday is the official kickoff of the traditional retail season, the story goes, online retail really takes off the following Monday.

Just one problem: It's not true, at least for many online retailers. Contrary to what the recent blitz of media coverage implies, Cyber Monday isn't nearly the biggest online shopping or spending day of the year. It ranks only as the 12th-biggest day historically, according to market researcher comScore Networks. It's not even the first big day of the season.

For most online retailers, the bigger spending day of the season to date was way back on Nov. 22, three days before Black Friday. What's more, most e-tailers say the season's top spending day comes much later, between around Dec. 5 and Dec. 15.

Maybe someday Business Week can also tell me what day marks the end of what it describes as "the traditional retail season"--it's nowhere to be found in this article.

Just in time for the Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name, Tammy Bruce has a great cartoon.

(Via Lorie Byrd.)

Wizbang looks at the holiday who's primary symbol Must Not Be Named--at least in English.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, my local Albertson's Supermarket is happily advertising Freshly Cut Christmas Trees, however.

Update: Michelle Malkin has more on the War On Christmas. And this post is a good place to replay something I wrote last week:

As I noted in my post about the OSM launch, New York Times fashion contributor Elizabeth Hayt thinks we're in midst of a conservative theocracy. But it's been ten years since the GOP took control of Congress, they've held the Senate for most of that period, and January will mark five years of President Bush in office. Meantime, the gift shop inside that theocratic GOP-controlled Senate sells festive "Holiday" ornaments. To place on your non-demoninational winter solstitial temporary interior tree.

That's a theocracy? Only to a woman who just knows she's this close to being fitted for a burka with GOP elephants printed on it. (Probably made of polyester, too.)

Another Update: Don Surber has a bit of good news from California.

Pajamas Media has a round-up of action from the official kick-off of the Christmas shopping season.

Meanwhile, Virginia Postrel looks at--to coin a phrase--the Substance of Style:

The great thing about fashion markets today is how diverse they are, even outside of major metro areas. Many different styles coexist and there isn't a simple, price-based status hierarchy. You can buy trendy but disposable clothes--"fast fashion"--or classic, enduring pieces. Basic jeans, sweaters, and T-shirts cost about the same, in nominal dollars, as they did when I was a teenager in the late 1970s, and their materials and construction are generally much better. Those cheap clothes are also helping a billion Chinese climb out of abject poverty.

The bad thing about fashion markets today is how many empire-waist tops and dresses they sell. I don't care how cute, young, and skinny you are. Those things make you look pregnant.

The other bad thing about fashion markets is that they give The Decade That Taste Forgot a feeling of permanence it in no way deserves.

Evan Coyne Maloney notes that Toronto's schools have banned Halloween:

Last week, teachers in Toronto received a memo from the District School Board advising them to "forego traditional classroom Halloween celebrations because they are disrespectful of Wiccans and may cause some children to feel excluded."

Evan adds:

what kind of culture will we be left with if we rid ourselves of everything that makes us unique just so we don't offend any new arrivals? We bend over backwards to accommodate every foreign and fringe culture, but at the same time, we don't even show half that respect to the culture that already exists here.

Are the High Priests of Political Correctness really concerned with being open to other cultures? Or is their real goal to destroy ours?

My money's on the latter. In his latest Newhouse essay, James Lileks looks at Canada's mother country:

Government workers in the West Midlands were ordered to remove or hide anything with a pig on it, including a tissue box that contained a picture of The Littlest Satan, Piglet. (One Muslim citizen had complained. One.) In 2003, a West Yorkshire school removed books from classrooms because they contained pigs. Out went Busytown volumes and "Charlotte's Web." In came cultural apartheid.

At the risk of alienating those who wish to pave the Middle East, Islam is not the problem. The Muslim Council of Britain, after all, opposed the pig-book ban.

The problem is Official England: a culture so terrified of asserting itself that it caves every time someone announces he's offended. The proper response to anti-pig initiatives? Calmly reply that Britain is not ruled by Shariah, but is composed of many cultures, the beliefs of which occasionally conflict.

Multiculturalism is a fine and necessary idea. Cultures that seal themselves off wither and die. England is better for having ska and curry, just as Saudi Arabia is poorer for lacking, oh, women's rights and a penal code that does not hand out amputation. So to speak.

But as an ideology, multiculturalism is not only predicated on a falsehood, but a lie even it doesn't believe.

Multi-culti dogma asserts that all cultures are equal, but refuses to defend the dominant culture when assailed for insensitivity, no matter how retrograde or niggling the charge. Rather than assert the primacy of a generally shared idea, it simply eliminates any official manifestations of the idea. Problem solved! See also, Christmas.

Europe today, America tomorrow?

Only slightly apropos of James' comments, it's fascinating to flip through the latest Brooks Brothers "Holiday" catalog. It's filled with happy, shiny people in expensive, conservative clothes standing in front of holly, and wreaths--and even verdant trees temporarily placed inside homes during the month of December with brightly colored baubles and lights hung on them...and not one mention of the C-word anywhere in the catalog.

Last year, Steve Green (who's going trick-or-treating tonight dressed as an extra from Exit To Eden; no word yet if Robin Givhan will be critiquing his leather duds) wrote that for him, Halloween is the grown-up equivalent of Christmas.

He may be more right than he knows: these folks theorize that Jesus was born on October 31st.

(Found via the Corner.)

Last week, James Lileks looked at the disparity in the coverage over the years at the Minneapolis Tribune, the predecessor to the newspaper that currently employs him.

Mark Gauvreau Judge performs a similar experiment by comparing Yuletide coverage in the 1953 and 2003 versions of the Washington Post.

On Christmas day, we linked to a couple of items from Power Line and Mark Steyn on whether or not Christmas was vanishing in the US. Steyn wrote:

Every time some sensitive flower pulls off a legal victory over the school board, who really wins? For the answer to that, look no further than last month's election results. Forty years of effort by the American Civil Liberties Union to eliminate God from the public square have led to a resurgent, evangelical and politicised Christianity in America. By "politicised", I don't mean that anyone who feels his kid should be allowed to sing Silent Night if he wants to is perforce a Republican, but only that year in, year out it becomes harder for such folks to support a secular Democratic Party closely allied with the anti-Christmas militants. American liberals need to rethink their priorities: what's more important? Winning a victory over the kindergarten teacher's holiday concert, or winning back Congress and the White House?

In Britain, by contrast, the formal symbols remain in place: the Queen is still Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the Archbishop of York still sits in the House of Lords. But, underneath all that, Christianity has collapsed, the churches are empty and the new Europe is as officious about public expressions of faith but without the countervailing balance of America's First Amendment protections.

Today, Jayson Javitz of PoliPundit, in a post titled, "Law of Unintended Consequences" writes:

The far left has been trying to litigate and browbeat religion out of the public arena for decades.

This piece, in the Washington Times, addresses whether the angry, hyper-separationists’ exhaustive efforts to “de-Christian-ize” the nation actually have resulted in a Christian revival.

Hmm.

Of course, it would not be unprecedented for the far left to suffer the law of unintended political consequences.

Just ask House Speaker Tom Foley. Or Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle . . .

George Will looks at George Washington and December 25, 1776.

I don't know if Will writes his headlines, but I can't help but think that the use of "greatest" might be at least a subliminal comment on the subject of Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation book.

John Hinderaker writes, "We are about to witness a major battle in the war against religion, as President Bush stands behind his nominations of conservative judges":

I'm looking forward to the Democrats' effort to explain to the American people why people of faith can't be appellate judges. It will be, I think, another nail in their coffin. After all, Democratic politicians, when they are running for office, have to pretend that they are constantly influenced by their own religious convictions; just recall John Kerry in the last election, or Bill Clinton carrying a Bible around for the benefit of Sunday morning photographers.

So: religion is undoubtedly under attack, but here in America, at least, the battle is going quite well. That doesn't mean that people of faith should let down their guard, and it certainly doesn't mean that we should be oblivious to what is happening around the world. In a number of countries, to be a practicing Jew or Christian is to risk death. But let's, for now, celebrate the fact that religious conviction is advancing, not receding, as a factor in American life.

Mark Steyn writes that in many respects, the left's assault on religion in American has strengthened the resolve of those of faith, not weakened them:

But every time some sensitive flower pulls off a legal victory over the school board, who really wins? For the answer to that, look no further than last month's election results. Forty years of effort by the American Civil Liberties Union to eliminate God from the public square have led to a resurgent, evangelical and politicised Christianity in America. By "politicised", I don't mean that anyone who feels his kid should be allowed to sing Silent Night if he wants to is perforce a Republican, but only that year in, year out it becomes harder for such folks to support a secular Democratic Party closely allied with the anti-Christmas militants. American liberals need to rethink their priorities: what's more important? Winning a victory over the kindergarten teacher's holiday concert, or winning back Congress and the White House?

In Britain, by contrast, the formal symbols remain in place: the Queen is still Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the Archbishop of York still sits in the House of Lords. But, underneath all that, Christianity has collapsed, the churches are empty and the new Europe is as officious about public expressions of faith but without the countervailing balance of America's First Amendment protections.

Last year, I felt that Christmas was fading in popularity. This year, I feel a bit more reassured. Next year? It's about 340 days too soon to tell of course, but it will be interesting to see if stores and government, but local and national, have learned anything from the outcry this year.

Posting will be pretty sparse on Christmas day. In the meantime, let me take this opportunity to wish our readers:

A Very Merry Christmas!

This is one father's way of punishing his unruly kids at Christmastime: he put all their toys up for bidding on eBay!

This is the 50th year that NORAD has tracked Santa to make sure he has a safe flight around the world.

There's a moving tribute to them here; Meanwhile Betsy Newmark notes that David Letterman and Paul Shaffer are in Iraq to entertain the troops on Christmas Eve. "Anybody here from out of town?" Letterman asked, adding "If I wanted to face insurgents I would've spent Christmas with my relatives."

"Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to. Don't you see? It's not just Kris that's on trial, it's everything he stands for. It's kindness and joy and love and all the other intangibles."

--From Miracle on 34th Street.

Tim Worstall of Tech Central Station would like some crystallized fruit for Christmas.

No really--it's a fun essay, and well worth reading.

Newspapermen should check out their competitors' works from time to time. For example, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post would have been better off reading James Lileks of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune before he wrote his piece.

Update: PoliPundit looks at more Scroogeness.

Another Update: The Post might also want to read The Grinch List, which has been updated for 2004.

If this site doesn't get you in the mood for Christmas, you've got a harder heart than I have.

(Via Carnivorous Conservative's bloggerific "Twas the Night Before Christmas".)

John J. Miller has a really interesting piece on Christmas trivia, which includes this tidbit:

What was the Star of Bethlehem?

Would you believe it's Jupiter? That's what one astronomer thinks. I find his theory plausible, and wrote about for NRO two years ago here.

Jupiter of course, was the destination of the spaceship Discovery in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that Kubrick and co-writer Arthur C. Clarke intended (among many other things) to be an alternate look at man's relationship with God.

Kubrick himself told an interviewer the year after its release:

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Want to read a spiffy 21st century version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol?

There's so many to choose from!

Brilliant James Lileks piece tracking the slow erasure of Christmas from the public--and print--space.

Douglas Kern and a person only identified as "Absolutely Not Kern's Hippie Brother-In-Law" weigh the merits.

My take? I believe that Santa was a bipartisan, centrist kind of guy until about 1972.

Cafe Hayek describes a typical Cajun Italian German English Japanese Dutch Russian Guatemalan Jewish Christmas in America.

(Found via Tech Central Station.)

Betsy Newmark links to this Washington Post article on using the courts to fight back against the disappearance of The Holiday That Dare Not Be Named Christmas. On the whole, it's pretty good and surprisingly balanced, but it seems like its author can't figure out how to end it. (Gee, that never happens to me!)

So it ends sort of unconsciously parodying itself:

Barry Lynn, executive director of the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the "new strategy of the Christian Right is forced inclusion -- they take a secular display and demand that Christian symbols and carols be added."

Christian talk radio, Lynn said, is fueling a "huge movement saying there is a war against Christmas both by the government and by private business, which I think is nonsensical, because unless you live in a cave in America in December, you know it's Christmas."

So the executive director of an organization named Americans United for Separation of Church and State feels that it's "nonsensical" for Christians to feel that there is a "huge movement saying there is a war against Christmas". Despite the fact that he's the head of an organization that's named...Americans United for Separation of Church and State!

And the last paragraph is a classic:

But Anthony R. Picarello Jr., a lawyer with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which works for greater freedom of religious expression, said it is not easy to say which side is truly the aggressor. "If these Christmas pageants and displays have been done for a long time and now there's a push to exclude them, then it appears to be aggression from the left. If they haven't been done and someone's suing to add them, then it appears to be aggression from the right."

Wow, there's some decisive logic there: maybe it's aggression from the right. Maybe it's aggression from the left. Who knows! Way to dig deep, Washington Post.

Incidentally, despite linking to articles like this, I'm not that religious a person myself. But it's been interesting to watch the symbols and words associated with Christmas increasingly being forced under the radar in the past 10 to 15 years, despite what Mr. Lynn claims. Even though at least 90 percent of the country both celebrates Christmas and, not surprisingly, isn't in the least offended by it. Of course, as Peggy Noonan notes, there's a tremendous opportunity just waiting for the left if they're willing to denounce this trend.

Just in time for Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life in 30 seconds, and starring bunnies.

(Everyone else will link to this in the next week, so why shouldn't I?)

Update: See what I mean? (And man, that was fast!)

Ever since the election, Democrats have been trying to find a way to bridge the gap between the left and the right, and the blue states and the red ones. And to try to and erase the stigma, as Rod Dreher of The Dallas Morning News dubbed them, of being The Godless Party.

Peggy Noonan has an excellent first step:

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Glenn Reynolds, writing over at Tech Central Station says that thanks to the Internet, "another Hollywood storyline died this week. And good riddance".

Jim Geraghty, Orrin Judd, and John Derbyshire each look at the backlash against eliminating the word Christmas from public space. Geragthy writes:

Cam, Mike McCarville and others on NRANews are fired up about Oklahoma schools that are making sure no Christmas carols appear at the “Holiday Concert,” while songs about Hannukah or Winter Solstice are okay.

As one who is not threatened, and who in fact applauds the flourishing of faith in American life, I disagree with the school decision, but am more reassured than outraged. This reaction is based on my suspicion that the backlash to this hyper-political correctness will “move the ball” more in our direction than in theirs.

Is there any force in life that makes us more motivated than some screeching harpies demanding that we stop doing something because it offends them? Could anything spur folks to make publicly-visible expressions of religious faith on private property than some bullying hyper-sensitive litigious folk demanding a holiday-free zone?

Cautious corporations and advertisers may be quickly replacing their Christmas decorations with generic expressions of “Happy Holidays,” but I suspect ordinary citizens, having been challenged by someone with the audacity to issue fatwas on certain phrases, songs, and symbols, are going to defy this with ever-greater and holiday-specific expressions.

I agree--it's very strange (and frustrating) to watch each fall progress from Halloween to Thanksgiving, to "The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name", as James Lileks ironically dubbed Christmas last year.

One of the benefits of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine is that it's possible to set it to way, way, waaaay back, and see what was going on on the original mww.ceasar.gov web server, 2,004 years ago...

(Via Resurrection Song.)

Somehow, The New York Times manages to invoke Godwin's Law in a review of The Polar Express, a Christmas movie:

It's likely, I imagine, that most moviegoers will be more concerned by the eerie listlessness of those characters' faces and the grim vision of Santa Claus's North Pole compound, with interiors that look like a munitions factory and facades that seem conceived along the same oppressive lines as Coketown, the red-brick town of "machinery and tall chimneys" in Dickens's "Hard Times." Tots surely won't recognize that Santa's big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will." But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.

For the Times, Michael Moore, whom many Red Staters would actually consider to be the second coming of Leni Riefenstahl (except that Leni was a better filmmaker), is "a credit to the republic", but in an animated Christmas movie, they manage to find not just subliminal Nazi references, but Freudian phallic symbols (well, scrotal symbols(!), to be accurate) as well.

Merry Christmas, all you simple hicks living in the Red States, from the enlightened, compassionate elites at the Times!

(Via a comment posted on VodkaPundit.)

In the mail today was the annual National Geographic catalog, just in time to begin shopping for what James Lileks would call "The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name".

Tell me--what does this cover suggest to you?

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Richard J. Rosendall of FrontPage magazine.com goes "Shopping for Roots". See also this Tony Snow piece from 1999.

Incidentally, I wonder if Kwanzaa and its relatively recent creation was the inspiration for Seinfeld's "Festivus" episode.

"NYC Schools Given Lumps of Coal for Banning Nativity Scenes".

THE GHOSTS OF TECHNO-CHRISTMAS PAST, and present, as explored by Ralph Kinney Bennett, of Tech Central Station.

HOW THE SECURALIST GRINCHES stole Christmas at Ground Zero is the subject of this WSJ "OpinionJournal" piece.

Dave Kopel writes that "Despite the gloomy headlines and tone of these stories, the facts from the articles told another story":

Christmas sales set an all-time record, up 1.5 percent from last year's best-ever sales. The increase in sales was the lowest in 30 years, but a small increase from a record high is still a new record high.

Since inflation was about 2 percent, the population is slightly larger and the number of post-Thanksgiving shopping days fewer in 2002 than in 2001, an accurate headline and article might have said "Christmas sales stable," instead of the overly gloomy picture painted by most of the media.

InstaPundit agrees (or more accurately, Kopel agrees with InstaPundit--since InstaPundit's post is dated... the day after Christmas).