{"id":26444,"date":"2018-12-02T08:56:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-02T15:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=26444"},"modified":"2018-12-02T08:50:43","modified_gmt":"2018-12-02T15:50:43","slug":"naughty-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/naughty-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Naughty Stuff of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It was expected that in the era of President Donald Trump the war on Christmas<\/a> would become more extreme. But nobody saw this coming.<\/p>\n

This time it is not the religious of Christmas<\/a> under attack. It is definitively secular.<\/p>\n

Charlie Brown\u2019s Thanksgiving<\/a><\/em>, more than half a century old, is now considered by some to be racist<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer<\/em>, the 54-year old television special, is now deemed to be full of bigoted and sexist content<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

An Ohio radio<\/a> station has pulled all versions of the song Baby It\u2019s Cold Outside<\/em> saying that the song is inappropriate in the era of #MeToo<\/em><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

None of this is the sacred stuff of Christmas<\/a>. This is the secularists eating their own.<\/p>\n

Where will it end \u2013 and why are they doing it<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect it to end soon.<\/p>\n

There are, after all, plenty of suspects for the PC police to pursue.<\/p>\n

George Bailey, for example, abuses his wife and kids.<\/p>\n

Kevin McCallister ruthlessly tortures thieves after he is abandoned and left Home Alone<\/em> by his clueless parents.<\/p>\n

Clark Griswold is a pervert of the first order and his cousin Eddie is an environmental terrorist and a kidnapper.<\/p>\n

Cary Grant plays an angel that plies liquor on unsuspecting humans.<\/p>\n

Buddy the Elf<\/a> is illegally adopted, treated like a misfit and rejected by his own father.<\/p>\n

Scrooge is homicidal, Santa<\/a> is insane in Miracle on 24th Street<\/em> and a fat pig in The Santa<\/a> Clause<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Dad in A Christmas<\/a> Story<\/em> has electric sex in his front window, Bing Crosby trolls a woman half his age in White Christmas<\/a><\/em>, and the Polar Express<\/em> appears to whisk children away on a runaway train without parental knowledge or escort.<\/p>\n

Even The Muppet Christmas<\/a> Carol<\/em>, harmless as that might appear, actually drowns a rat in frozen water and features Beaker flipping the bird to Scrooge. (You can google that, kids).<\/p>\n

Even the new stuff of Christmas<\/a> is coming under fire.<\/p>\n

Kurt Russell\u2019s Santa<\/a> in The Christmas<\/a> Chronicles<\/em> on Netflix is criticized for stealing a car, going to jail and then singing a quasi-dirty Santa<\/a> song with street walkers and druggies.<\/p>\n

Christmas<\/a> suddenly appears just can\u2019t seem to do anything right.<\/p>\n

Is that their goal? To demonize Christmas<\/a>? Will shaming it in whatever countless ways cause it to go away? Is that what they are up to?<\/p>\n

If so, it is a bizarre tactic.<\/p>\n

After all this is the same crowd that howls at South Park Christmas<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

It is same bunch that made Bad Santa<\/a><\/em> so popular Hollywood was challenged in topping it with an even more disgusting sequel.<\/p>\n

The hypocrisy, of course, bleeds over into everything non-Christmas related, too.<\/p>\n

While they rail on the 50+ year old Rudolph<\/em> and Charlie Brown<\/em> they are applauding the naked Mylie Cyrus, Katie Perry or Taylor Swift with whatever they publish without limits.<\/p>\n

So is their aim moral? Or merely to destroy the institutions of Christmas<\/a>?<\/p>\n

This is the newest debate of Christmas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is a strange one.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that many of the beloved icons of culture related to Christmas<\/a> are flawed.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that is why we love<\/a> them. We enjoy Rudolph not because he suffered but because he overcame.<\/p>\n

Charlie Brown isn\u2019t racist.<\/p>\n

In fact, if you do just a smidge of research you will find that Charles Schulz and his Peanuts<\/em> were barrier breaking when it came to race. To criticize him now is to diminish what was accomplished at the time.<\/p>\n

Technically, Baby It\u2019s Cold Outside<\/em> is not a Christmas<\/a> song.<\/p>\n

But then again neither is Jingle Bells<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What separates these two holiday season songs besides a hundred years?<\/p>\n

They are, at the end of the day, really about the same thing: wooing women<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In fact, the books of Christmas<\/a> history are filled with love<\/a> songs.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s Christmas<\/a>, if it is not about love<\/a>?<\/p>\n

As a Christmas<\/a> traditionalist I could suggest that we just stick to the fundaments of Christmas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Angels We Heard on High<\/em> and Away in a Manger<\/em> seem to be safe enough for everyone, right?<\/p>\n

Uh\u2026no.<\/p>\n

Here it is 2018 and we have yet another school who has banned traditional Christmas music<\/a><\/strong>, this one in Virginia. (What music can they play? Well, Rudolph<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Their excuse? The school wants to be \u201cmore sensitive to the increasing diverse population at the school.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, in order to not offend, they offend mostly everyone.<\/p>\n

Yeah, makes sense<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The war on Christmas<\/a> is not really a war because these battles can never be won. They can only escalate and drone on.<\/p>\n

The endless debate over Merry Christmas<\/a> is a great example. The term \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d, despite pure dictionary meaning, is classically American.<\/p>\n

Ironically, \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d is<\/em> inclusive. Previous to the 1990s it was wholeheartedly embraced by Americans of all religious backgrounds (or of no religious background).<\/p>\n

It co-existed with \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d.<\/p>\n

Andy Williams made a hit of Happy Holiday<\/em> on the radio<\/a> in 1963. It didn\u2019t become a hit because it offended the Merry Christmas<\/a> crowd because there was no Merry Christmas<\/a> crowd in 1963.<\/p>\n

Everyone said Merry Christmas<\/a> without another thought back then.<\/p>\n

But now we think about it. Because to say so seems, um, naughty in some way.<\/p>\n

The whole Merry Christmas\/Happy Holiday debate began as a political ploy in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

We keep playing those games and falling into these traps. The truth, in fact, is that Merry Christmas<\/a><\/em> is not offensive and saying Happy Holidays<\/em> is not offensive. You don’t have to pick a side.<\/p>\n

Neither is naughty.<\/p>\n

All of this weird \u2013 and getting weirder with every passing season.<\/p>\n

Click here to listen to the Naughty Episode of the Merry Podcast<\/a><\/strong> — a candid and sometimes eye-popping and uncomfortable frolic down memory lane and a bit of Christmas<\/a> history many never want to talk about. It’s a fun episode, in truth, one filled with humor and great music.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was expected that in the era of President Donald Trump the war on Christmas would become more extreme. But nobody saw this coming. This time it is not the religious of Christmas under attack. It is definitively secular. Charlie Brown\u2019s Thanksgiving, more than half a century old, is now considered by some to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26446,"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":18,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,20],"tags":[716],"class_list":["post-26444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-news","category-christmas-opinion","tag-naughty-list"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26444","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=26444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}