Happy Thanksgiving and now we are about to enter the holiday season.
Can we please go back to the old ways and identify the holidays that are pertinent to certain groups?
Can we please avoid all the “Holiday Tree,” “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” stuff?
Can we please not think that it is politically correct to obliterate Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanza from our language?
Christmas will be Sunday, December 25. Hanukkah begins the same day. Kwanza begins the next day, December 26.
The names of all these holidays are distinctive names for very distinctive, honorable and lovely holidays.
I don’t want them obliterated because of some stupid foolishness over “political correctness” (a monstrous idea foisted on us), hurting anyone’s feelings, or overlooking something, or some other preposterous nonsense.
This column was written before John Gibson, a TV personality, started publicizing his book on the same theme, but he has the right idea.
I am so happy he has done this, because the message contained in his work will reach many people.
We have become so secularized in this country that certain forces have worked for the past several years to eliminate – yes, actually eliminate – the word Christmas from the public vocabulary.
It is imperative that we become traditionalists – consciously use the word “Christmas” in any and all circumstances that apply. Don’t fall for this “holiday tree” (and all its varieties) hogwash.
Christmas, in particular, has gone beyond its religious significance as a religious holiday in the western world and has become an event.
It is a time not only for the observance of what it originally celebrates, but a time for drawing families together, to promoting good will among people, a season to stand back and review.
How this country ever got down the path of the nonsense of separating church and state in the fashion that has become popular is most distressing.
Go back to the beginning.
In the early days in the colonies, churches in many places were established, that is, were supported by government funds. That is what “established” means – supported by tax funds.
When the Constitution under which we live was formulated in 1787, some wanted additions made to it – what has become known as the “Bill of Rights.”
First among those additions (a law professor I once had always referred to the “Constitution and its additions and amendments”) was the First Amendment, including, among other things, that Congress “shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion or the free exercise thereof.”
Pretty plain.
Some states, particularly ones in New England, strongly backed that idea. The reason? They had established churches and the “no law” stricture enabled them to continue with that. Kind of a back door reason, but that’s what it was.
The reason Henry Thoreau went to jail in Concord, Massachusetts, was because he refused to pay the tax that supported the local minister.
In those days, the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states. James Madison wanted express language among the additions saying that they did, but that failed.
It was not until the 14th Amendment, after the Civil War, that the Bill of Rights began to be extended to the states.
I say this: Don’t you (whoever you are) dare to take Christmas away from me.
The season begins now, it seems.
Happy Thanksgiving!