Media’s so-called attack on Christmas may just be paranoia.
By: Hank Kalet
America is being ruled by a left-wing cabal, a secular progressive movement so influential it can use its power over the media to crush Christmas.
At least that’s what folks like Bill O’Reilly and Ben Stein would have you believe.
The argument goes like this: The mainstream media has gotten into bed with the American Civil Liberties Union and hard-core secularists to push an agenda that marginalizes Christmas. At the very least, the media has been cowed by the left into following this nefarious agenda.
The evidence? A so-called campaign by large retailers like Wal-Mart and Target to focus on "the holidays" and not on Christmas.
Mr. O’Reilly, host of Fox News channel’s "The O’Reilly Factor," has been on the attack since at least November, charging the American Civil Liberties Union and a "media that blatantly promotes secularism" of "convincing some Americans that the words Merry Christmas are inappropriate while celebrating the national holiday of Christmas."
It is a "national trend away from acknowledging Christmas," he says, that threatens not only the what he has called at various times a "national holiday" and a "public holiday," but "tradition" itself.
"If Christmas in America can be marginalized, any tradition (his italics) can be including marriage and the way you raise your kids," he wrote in his Nov. 29 Talking Point on the Fox News Web site.
Mr. Stein, for his part, takes a slightly different tack, though he ends up at the same destination. During a commentary on this week’s "CBS Sunday Morning," he found a way to link the national obsession with celebrity "the idea … that we should worship Nick and Jessica" with some imaginary campaign to strip Americans of their rights to "worship God as we understand him."
The whole thing would be funny if it weren’t actually gaining traction polls show that a majority are taking this nonsense seriously, with talking-head shows following suit, the "war on Christmas" becoming serious fodder for the nattering nabobs of network news.
There is no "war" here, of course. Christmas carols have been playing almost nonstop at the malls since the early fall and a drive down Cranbury’s Main Street or along Route 1 near the Monmouth Mobile Home Park will prove that public holiday displays remain in vogue. TV is awash in Christmas, with seasonal specials bidding for airtime against the Christmas episodes of shows like "My Name is Earl," "The Office" and "That ’70s Show." And everyone from Jet and The Darkness to Cyndi Lauper and Alicia Keys has recorded a Christmas song.
"It is a manufactured crisis," Adam Cohen wrote in his Talking Points column on The New York Times Web site. "Christmas is a holiday that is primarily celebrated in churches and in the home, and by all accounts it is thriving."
So what gives?
"Religious conservatives are using Christmas for a political purpose: as a cudgel to push the prayers and displays of their own form of Christianity into public spaces, including public schools, and to make America more like a theocracy," Mr. Cohen wrote.
Mr. Cohen says that the rhetoric of people like Mr. O’Reilly has "often been incendiary," calling forth secret plots and attacks on "Christian philosophy."
What the use of generic phrases like "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" has to do with religious philosophy, Christian dogma or spirituality I can’t for the life of me figure out.
So, again, I ask: What gives?
I think Jay Bookman, deputy editorial page editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has the answer. In a perceptive column last week, he wonders what happened to the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Gay marriage, after all, was the right’s bte noir last year, the boogeyman in the closet, a huge threat to traditional marriage and society, as we know it.
During the election season of 2004, Mr. Bookman wrote, the rhetoric turned rather harsh, as if the fate of the Western world depended on it. And it had its effect, he said, "driving conservative voters to the polls in large numbers, helping to re-elect President Bush and increasing Republican representation in Congress and state legislatures."
But then the controversy was gone.
"A cynical person might look at that evidence and suggest that maybe the gay-marriage controversy was never real in the first place," Mr. Bookman wrote. "Maybe it was just a product, like soap or toilet paper, that was manufactured by politicians and then sold by certain media outlets and interest groups. Maybe those politicians never had any intention of trying to pass such an amendment and were merely playing their supporters for fools."
Mr. Bookman views the supposed threats posed by gay marriage and the liberal "war on Christmas" through the same lens.
"Basically, what you’re seeing is a retail operation, and gay marriage was last year’s inventory," he wrote. "It has been rotated off the shelves, at least for now, to make way for a holiday-themed product in exactly the same way that Home Depot removes inventory from its garden section to make space for Christmas trees.
"But the move is only temporary. Congressional Quarterly, the nonpartisan publication that covers Congress, notes that GOP leaders are expected to revive the marriage amendment and bring it to the floor for a vote next year, ‘in advance of the midterm elections.’"
Perhaps, I’m just being cynical or paranoid. Maybe all these conservative groups, while misguided, truly believe they are under siege and are not engaged in political pandering, or worse. Perhaps.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected].

