The other day I posted remarks about an obnoxious e-mail I received, here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5497380 After mulling it over for awhile -- this one really pissed me off -- I wrote the following. I will send it to everybody on the forward list. The freeptard who wrote it in the first place won't see it, but maybe a few others will read it, and maybe think a little:
Waaahh! That bad man said “Happy Holidays!” Make him stop!
So. Who’s whining now?
Here’s what I’m sick of: The notion that there’s some kind of “war” on Christmas, or Christianity, or “real” (that is, white, Christian, native-born) Americans. I call bullshit.
First: Nobody is “forcing” you to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” The fact that some merchants choose the former greeting over the latter merely reflects a business decision to encourage all of their customers, not only those who celebrate Christmas, to shop at their establishments. While it is true that a substantial majority of Americans do celebrate Christmas, there is also a significant minority who do not – and those people do not simply disappear during the months of November and December. They continue to shop for things they need and want, and maybe some retailers have figured out that their businesses will actually benefit by the simple, inoffensive courtesy of including non-Christians in their good wishes. That’s fine old American capitalism, isn’t it?
And just exactly where did the absurd notion that Christmas is being suppressed come from? How did 80% of the American population suddenly turn into oppressed victims? Where are all the coliseums and the lions? I certainly see no evidence of anti-Christmasism or anti-Christianity in the retail world. On the contrary, we are besieged with Christmas decorations, music and advertising beginning immediately after Halloween and continuing without respite until December 25, and even after. Perhaps the greatest irony arising from the fatuous claim that the celebration of Christmas is being suppressed is that for years many Christians have complained that Christmas has become too commercialized, and that we think too much about gift-buying and giving and not enough about that day’s true meaning. And yet now comes the complaint that some stores’ employees, by failing to say “Merry Christmas” every time somebody buys a pair of socks or a screwdriver, aren’t pimping Christmas enough.
But you know what? I don’t care if the kid who works part-time at Target greets me with Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas when I go there this afternoon to pick up a sack of cat litter. I will decorate my house with Christmas lights and put up a Christmas tree and enjoy listening to Christmas music and maybe go to church on Christmas Eve, just like I’ve always done. Nobody is stopping me, or you, from doing any of those things. My celebration of Christmas is not affected in the least by what somebody says at the mall or by whether some other people don’t celebrate it at all. Is your belief in the meaning of Christmas so feeble that such trivial things can take something away from you? If it is, I’m sorry for you.
And there’s this: Somehow this phony “war on Christmas” has become conflated with an equally phony “war on American values.” It is suggested that immigrants are diluting our “culture” (whatever that is) because they do not speak English and perhaps aren’t Christian and don’t observe all of our customs. I guess the principle is that when you move to another country you should immediately adopt the language, dress, customs and religion of that country. But if that’s the case, why are we not all speaking Algonquin or Choctaw or Ojibway? When European settlers first came to this continent, they didn’t assimilate into the existing culture – instead, they simply killed the indigenous people and took their land. So much for that notion.
But let’s make one thing clear: When people come here and obtain citizenship, their rights as American citizens under the Constitution are exactly the same as the rights of those who were born here. Your rights as a native, white Christian are in no respect superior to the rights of, for example, a recently naturalized Somali Muslim. You do not have the right to insist that this immigrant speak English, change his religion, dress or customs. It is not a condition of citizenship that a new immigrant immediately gain forty pounds, start wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a baseball cap, buy an SUV and slap a “Support Our Troops” magnet on the bumper, join the Republican party, and sit on his fat ass watching NASCAR on television. That immigrant is not required to speak English in his home, go to your church, eat your food, or say “Merry Christmas” when he sees you on the street. He is as free as you are to worship any God or no God. Every law-abiding, tax-paying American citizen, regardless of race, religion, or country of origin, is as valuable to this country as every other – including you and me.
And, by the way, did you know that the United States was not, in fact, organized as a Christian nation? If you spent a little time reading history instead of writing or forwarding ignorant, xenophobic e-mails, you might have heard of the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, which said: “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
The United States was founded as a secular nation because the Founding Fathers recognized that government neutrality in religious matters benefited all faiths, including Christianity. George Washington, in a 1790 letter to a Jewish congregation, pointed out that Jews had full freedom of worship in America: "All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship." This means that you are free to celebrate Christmas and your neighbor is equally free not to. It means nobody can make you say “Happy Holidays” and nobody can prevent you from saying “Merry Christmas.” There are, of course, countries that have state religions and that prohibit the practice of any other faiths – countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia. But I don’t care to live in such a place, even if the state religion were my own. Fortunately, the United States is not such a country – even if some people want it to be.
Finally, I need to ask this question: Why do you think American citizenship has to be a zero-sum game? That is, why do you think that the fact that some people speak a language other than English or practice a religion other than Christianity is somehow harmful to this country or to you individually? Immigrants eventually assimilate to a fair extent simply because it’s too inconvenient for them not to. But should it be any of my business if my Somali neighbor continues to speak his native language with his family or continues to attend a mosque instead of going to a church? I can still speak English even if he does not; I can still go to church even if he doesn’t. What he does as a free citizen does not affect my life as a free citizen.
Is your problem simply that you don’t like people who don’t look, talk or act like you? If that’s the problem, then maybe you’re the one who doesn’t belong here, because America is, was, and always will be, a nation of immigrants.
Live with it.
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