Posted on 12/18/2002 11:25:19 AM PST by heyheyhey
Two Words You Can’t Say On TV.
By Joseph Sobran
Every year I forget to wish our readers a Merry Christmas - or rather, I remember too late, failing to allow for lead time. It isn't as if I'm not reminded: The shopping and advertising madness begins the, day after Thanksgiving, on the dot. It reminds me of P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster: "Jeeves was in the other room hanging holly, for Christmas would soon be at our throats."
I know the feeling. It isn't just that the commercial side is so cloying; it's that the central meaning of Christmas is simultaneously suppressed. Santa is ubiquitous; Christ is nowhere to be seen. Just what are we celebrating? Toys R Us?
Even the religious music can be excessive. The local classical station starts playing it in late November (though of course the announcers never allude to its religious content). Silent Night is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, but do you really want to hear it three times a day for a month? You reach the point where you don't enjoy it; you want to offer it up. That goes double for the secular, seasonal music as much as I enjoy Leroy Anderson, by mid-December I can already do without hearing Sleigh Ride again until next year. Or the one after that.
Then too there is the minor festival of Hanukkah, whose importance has been exaggerated in -order to compete with Christmas in December. The public radio station presents rabbi after rabbi to explain why Hanukkah is significant, but no priests or ministers to explain the significance of Christmas. Such is "diversity."
For some years there has been a third entrant in the seasonal sweepstakes: the pseudo-African week-long celebration of Kwanzaa, actually concocted by a black California academic activist who used to be known as Ron Karenga, but who I believe has lately moved on to another alias. We're not hearing much about Kwanzaa this year, for some reason. Has it already petered out? If so, can Professor Karenga come up with a new ancient African tradition to replace it?
Amy minute now I expect some poofy outfit to announce that a certain date in December has always had "a sacred meaning for gay people." No doubt the media will run with it. I can just see Katie Couric doing interviews and nodding seriously. In fact, I'm surprised that the American Civil Liberties Union doesn't hold an annual December ceremony commemorating its first successful attempt to ban a crèche. They could sing O Come, Let Us Remove Him.
And of course the television stations ceaselessly wish us "happy holidays," though which holidays they allude to are unspecified. Would their licenses be suspended if they broadcast the forbidden words, "Merry Christmas"?
In short, Christmas is the season when polite people make every effort to avoid mentioning Christ. They seem to be afraid it would spoil the festive mood of our pagan holiday season. The modern world actually treats our Lord as an incongruous figure at His own birthday.
But nevertheless, it's still Christmas! All the worldly tawdriness that has accumulated around it seems to evaporate suddenly at Midnight Mass, and for a moment the whole world seems miraculously sanctified.
So let me wish all of you a holy and joyous Christmas, now and always.
Christmas is the season when polite people make every effort to avoid mentioning Christ. They seem to be afraid it would spoil the festive mood of our pagan holiday season. The modern world actually treats our Lord as an incongruous figure at His own birthday.
ad nausium.
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Merry Christmas everyone!
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