{"id":18420,"date":"2014-12-09T11:51:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T18:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=18420"},"modified":"2014-12-09T11:51:17","modified_gmt":"2014-12-09T18:51:17","slug":"time-says-christmas-should-not-be-a-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/time-says-christmas-should-not-be-a-holiday\/","title":{"rendered":"TIME Says Christmas Should Not Be a Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new article in TIME<\/strong><\/a> magazine today opines that Christmas<\/a> should not be a holiday and that, in fact, no religious observance should be a federal holiday. <\/p>\n

In so doing they fail to look at what established Christmas<\/a> as a holiday in America in first place. <\/p>\n

It was not an outcry of religious fervor. Christmas<\/a> had been celebrated on American shores since 1620 — and yet it took all that time for the federal government to establish Christmas<\/a> as a holiday. <\/p>\n

Why did it happen?<\/p>\n

It happened because of a labor dispute. Culturally most private sector companies of the time gave their workers Christmas<\/a> day off — and federal workers didn’t like it. They petitioned for the day off and, as the official declaration making Christmas<\/a> a holiday shows, the government declared it so with a proclamation absent of any mention of religion or even observance. <\/p>\n

Ironically, President Obama just declared the day AFTER Christmas in 2014 a holiday<\/strong><\/a> for federal workers for the very same reasons. Religion, then and now, had NOTHING to do with it. <\/p>\n

What TIME appears to want to do is to punish people for using federal holidays for religious purposes. <\/p>\n

What other reason could there be for such a suggestion?<\/p>\n

After all, it isn’t like the USA is setting any attendance records at Church. Yes, Christmas is still plenty religious<\/strong><\/a>. But Christmas<\/a>, as everyone knows, is dominated by secular celebration. <\/p>\n

The writer of the article wants Christmas<\/a> banish for the simple reason that it isn’t religious to her. <\/p>\n

Well, by all means — go ahead and work. Nobody will stop you. But learn a little history. Christmas<\/a> was never establish as a religious holiday. If you’re looking for one, look no further than Thanksgiving<\/a>. That’s a holiday who’s declaration is filled with references to God and frequently is observed by the President of the United States calling the public to prayer. But Christmas<\/a> as a federal holiday is about nothing<\/em> religious.<\/p>\n

The real purpose of editorials like this from TIME is to squelch religion, to make any kind of acknowledgement of religion by the government a bad thing. <\/p>\n

But in the case of Christmas<\/a> faith based people never asked for acknowledgement from the feds. They had enough of that in England, which is why the Puritan colony of Massachusetts didn’t even celebrate Christmas<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The argument can be made that the writer of TIME’s article is merely looking at Christmas<\/a> through the lens of the 21st century. <\/p>\n

And in that argument, she is still wrong. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new article in TIME magazine today opines that Christmas should not be a holiday and that, in fact, no religious observance should be a federal holiday. In so doing they fail to look at what established Christmas as a holiday in America in first place. It was not an outcry of religious fervor. Christmas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":43,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2,20],"tags":[173],"class_list":["post-18420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-features","category-christmas-news","category-christmas-opinion","tag-christmas-as-a-holiday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}