The war on Christmas is waged by reducing our celebrations to absurdities—not by pushing it into the private realm but by assuming it into the public.

By Declan LEARY

The day after Thanksgiving—the day after Thanksgiving—I was riding in somebody else’s car when some unholy noise started screeching from the radio. I’ve blocked the memory of exactly what it was, but suffice it to say that it was some kind of “Christmas” music of the abhorrent Mariah Carey variety. The driver, in a sadistic tone undeniably intended for yours truly, defended the move with just two words: It’s time.

I despise Christmas music. I hate it. I can’t stand it. I don’t want to listen to a single minute of it, and I certainly don’t want to listen to it starting at Thanksgiving and stretching right up to New Year’s.

Plenty of people share a moderated version of my opinion: that the music should be restricted to the actual Christmas season, which begins on December 25 and extends to Epiphany. The day after Thanksgiving is not, in fact, time. Advent, which began last Sunday (two days after that festive assault on my eardrums), is a penitential season and ought to be observed as such. As we sinners prepare to welcome God made man on Christmas Day, saccharine corporate pop with vapid lyrics about snow and bells and Hallmark romance with a holiday twist just doesn’t feel appropriate. Once He’s here though, turn ‘er up.

This is, of course, no kind of solution. The problem will not be solved by setting up a cordon sanitaire around it. Because the problem is not that hearing “All I Want for Christmas Is You” three times a day for 30 days straight would drive any reasonable person mad. The problem is that hearing “All I want for Christmas Is You” just once is an abomination. (I’d say it’s a safe bet that “you” to Mariah Carey is not the Word made flesh, though I am open to correction on this point.)

I have been called a Scrooge before for my reluctance to participate in such standard Yuletide merrymaking. But this misses the point. Pre-conversion Ebenezer Scrooge, infamous Dickensian hater of all things connected to St. Nick, would have loved the way we do Christmas. That miserable old capitalist would have been thrilled to see the holiday he despised reduced to a black mass for his god Mammon. In the story, Scrooge is overcome by the spirit of Christmas; in the real world, Christmas is overcome by the spirit of Scrooge.

This year (and I’m sure in others) the suggestion has been circulated that the entire Santa Claus Industrial Complex operates with insidious intent—even more insidious, that is, than the reduction of the incarnation of the Creator of the universe to a cheap commercial jubilee. Joel Berry, managing editor of satire site the Babylon Bee, proposes:

Hot take: Letting your kids believe in Santa Claus—who doesn’t exist—is just training them to deconstruct their faith and reject God, who does exist. Discuss.

— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) December 2, 2021

I think he’s right.

The secular left wait eagerly for Advent every year because it gives them an opportunity to loudly insist that “there is no war on Christmas,” an endearingly boomerish attachment to the terminology of a culture war that was maybe fought in the days of yore. Maybe I’m just missing it, but I don’t see many Republicans these days up in arms about the multiculturalists’ assault on public displays of mistletoe Christianity.

Both camps, as always, are wrong. There is, in fact, a war being waged on Christmas—but it is not a traditional war, not even a traditional culture war. This isn’t the old days, with clear combatants and battlefields, when the first of the dog moms launched high-intensity pressure campaigns to switch “Merry Christmas” for “Happy Holidays” on every sign at the local mall. The mall isn’t even open anymore.

The war on Christmas that remains is much more complicated, and much more dangerous. It is a fifth-generation war on an “omnipresent battlefield,” characterized by high-tech social engineering and complex psychological operations rather than traditional kinetic conflict.

The war on Christmas is waged by reducing our celebrations to absurdities—not (as the last generation worried) by pushing it into the private realm but by assuming it into the public one. The integration of St. Nicholas into Christmas ritual has been carefully reformed into a farcical commercial demon-worship, with the inevitable collapse of gimcrack enchantment eroding young people’s capacity for genuine faith and justified wonder. The venerable tradition of gift-giving has been twisted so grotesquely as to birth an entire pagan holiday of its own. The natural desire to celebrate the arrival of the Son of God on earth has given way to a soulless and only tangentially related holiday industry, characterized by nothing so aptly as that accursed clanging music.

If this is the second-holiest day of the Christian year we can hardly lay much blame on those who turn away. In all but the vital details it has been overtaken by a different faith, one that wipes out everything in its path only to kill itself in turn.

The antithesis of all this, actually, is the Christmas tree, a European pagan tradition that made its way into Christmas when the continent was baptized. Returning to that ever-present theme of which force conquers which, the tree reminds us that Christ at Christmas can remake not just Scrooge but every pagan and even paganism. It is a symbol not just of Christ’s coming but of his victory. It is Advent’s great sign of hope.

Three weeks from now you can feast and drink egg nog and swap gifts with those you love in honor of the infant Christ. Do it all around the tree that reminds you He—that infant—has made you and your world new, that he conquers the forces of darkness that would drag you to perdition. But if you can hear Mariah Carey wailing—even quietly, even faintly—over the crackle of the yule log in the background, you maybe ought to ask if they haven’t conquered you right back.

theamericanconservative.com

Christmas has passed and New Year is just around the corner. And the sales continue. Things started six weeks before Christmas with Singles Day, which began in China and is now the world’s biggest shopping day. This was followed by Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale, the pre-Christmas sales and now the period of post-Christmas or New Year sales. Soon it will be time for Valentine’s Day sales, Easter sales and so on. The sale events don’t seem to pause but instead persevere throughout the year and in various forms.

For retailers, these sales are a great opportunity to liquidate unsold or off-season stock into cash, make room for new stock and cross-sell existing stock via impulse or unplanned buying. For consumers, sales provide one or more “legit reasons” for spending and gifting, either to oneself, others or a bit of both. Indulgent spending is expected and even encouraged when discounts or bargains are widely available to be snatched up.

Putting their benefits aside, sales also come with numerous costs. Emotionally, they may drive consumers to spend money they do not have and then feel regret or guilt afterwards. Financially, they may entrap shoppers into (more) financial debt because of the faux sense of “entitled” indulgence or spending when there is a sale on. Psychologically, it may exacerbate compulsive buying disorder, also known as “oniomania”, by legitimising gifting and spending.

All this adds up to some serious environmental costs. Marketing academics like me often assess how people act through certain “behavioural lenses”, and I think there are two that are applicable here:

Throwaway culture

The throwaway lens, particularly visible in fashion, suggests that the more we buy, the more we throw away. While the correlation is yet to established empirically, it is logical to think that sales promote more buying and in turn mean there is more to throw away.

This proposition can be supported by the phenomenon of dwindling living space. In the UK, bedrooms are shrinking and on average living rooms in new build homes are a third smaller than in the 1970s. But despite this, people are still buying a lot more stuff than in the 1970s.

To make room for acquired sales items, people are likely to get rid of “pre-loved” items and harm the environment. For example, a UK parliament report in early 2019 found that in the country “around 300,000 tonnes of textile waste ends up in household black bins every year”, which is about 5kg per person. This is then sent to landfill or incinerators. The report notes that “less than 1%” of the material used to produce clothing is recycled. Our throwaway behaviour costs the planet.

Sales mean more products are returned

The product returns lens suggests a possible correlation between sales and the rate of product returns. Sales such as Black Friday have become digitally-oriented, with around three quarters of purchases being made online.

Online returns can involve a number of environmentally damaging activities. Consumers sending items back, and couriers collecting and redistributing them, all means extra driving and thus traffic congestion and carbon emissions. Cleaning, repairing and/or repackaging returned items mean consuming more natural resources and potentially using more materials that contain fossil fuels or palm oils. Processing, transporting and landfill of single-use or non-recyclable packaging used in returns mean more land use and a greater carbon footprint.

All of these activities are usually “invisible” to us, the consumer, and yet can have dire consequences for the environment. For instance, Vogue Business reported that in the US returns alone produce around 2.27 million tonnes of landfill waste and 15 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year, “equivalent to the amount of trash generated by 5 million people in a year”.

I don’t want to undermine the commercial value of sales nor the consumption joy they can bring when done wisely. However I cannot help wondering whether these sales can strike a balance between commercial, consumption and green value.

As we increasingly witness and experience the impacts of climate change, we do need to be (more) wary of our consumerist behaviours and subsequent environmental costs. A little thought for the environment might be just the way to enrich the shopping joy, or mitigate the spending guilt, experienced in sales events? Let’s spend (more) positively to protect our planet.

theconversation.com

The bickering over impeachment did not stop the president and Congress from coming together last week to avert a government shutdown by passing a 1.4 trillion dollar spending package.

The bipartisan agreement has something for everyone — a 22 billion dollars increase to bring total spending on militarism to 738 billion dollars, and a 27 billion dollars increase to bring total spending on domestic programs to 632 billion dollars. It also imposes a national ban on selling tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, to anyone under 21.

The agreement was split into two bills. Both bills were unveiled last Monday afternoon. The bills passed the House on Tuesday, so only the House leadership and the members of the Appropriations Committee (and their staffs) who helped write the over 2,000-page deal had any idea what was in the bills. But most members voted for the spending bills because they were fearful of backlash over another Christmastime government shutdown. House leadership simply “waived” the rule requiring that all legislation be available at least three days before being voted upon.

The modern practice of funding the government via gigantic omnibus bills that are rushed into law puts the growth of government on autopilot. This practice also gives the president more influence over the budget, violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution’s grant of authority to Congress to appropriate funds, which was intended as a check on executive power.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve continues pumping billions into the repurchasing market. When the Fed began injecting money into the market in September, it said intervention was a temporary measure to address a short-term liquidity shortage. Three months later, the Fed is not only continuing to bail out the repurchasing market, it is preparing for other bailouts. This is further evidence that we are on the verge of another Fed-created economic crisis.

When the crisis hits, the best thing the Fed could do is not to lower interest rates below the levels set by the market. This would allow consumers, businesses, and government to liquidate their debt and restore a sound foundation for future growth. If the Fed did not interfere with the painful but necessary correction, it would only be a short time before a real economic boom commenced.

The Federal Reserve is unlikely to follow this path because of the short-term pain it would cause debt-ridden consumers and, more importantly, the pain it would cause politicians who would be forced to cut spending and/or raise taxes. But continuing to artificially lower interest rates will inevitably result in an economic crisis brought about by a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status.

The Federal Reserve’s manipulation of interest rates depreciates the dollar’s value, enabling the growth of the welfare-warfare state while enriching the insiders who receive the new money before prices rise. The brunt of dollar depreciation is felt by middle- and working-class Americans whose paychecks do not keep up with the rising cost of living.

Inflation is nothing more than a hidden and regressive tax. Auditing and ending the Fed should thus be a top priority of those concerned about rising income inequality and poverty, as well as those dreaming of a Christmas free of 2,000-page omnibus spending bills.

ronpaulinstitute.org

We forget how religious observances and jolly celebration once complimented each other, that is, before it became political.

Addison Del MASTRO

You may have learned in a college course on the history of advertising that Santa Claus was invented by 19th century New York cartoonist Thomas Nast. Others consider the Ghost of Christmas Past to be the genesis of the modern Santa. The roots of Santa Claus go all the way back to pagan Germanic folklore or to an actual 6th century Saint Nick, or both. But there’s no question that Nast, and the Nast-inspired portrait of a Coke-chugging Santa, is the most immediate template for the fat, jolly man who symbolizes the secular version of Christmas in which good tidings of great joy are plentiful, but not inspired by anyone or anything in particular.

For a long time it felt like secular Christmas did not so much compete with the religious version, but complement it or harmlessly parallel it. It was a civic, American phenomenon, a universalized version of the Christian holiday, not mutually exclusive from it. Those who have grown up during the “war on Christmas” era, or who view “Season’s Greetings” as a secular affront, might be surprised that the Eisenhower White House’s 1957 Christmas card was bannered with exactly that salutation.

That same year, C.S. Lewis penned an essay on the meaning of Christmas, or rather, on three of them: the religious event, the jolly season, and the “commercial racket,” which is “good for trade.” The first two are perfectly compatible with each other, he argued, while the third one is destructive of both, a sentiment that may have been prescient rather than obvious back in the ’50s. Lewis’s essay nonetheless demonstrates that neither the secularization nor the commercialization of Christmas is new.

Tell that, however, to Donald Trump (superseding “War on Christmas” commander-in-chief Bill O’Reilly), whose campaign this season is selling merchandise emblazoned with the bold slogan “We’re Saying Merry Christmas Again.” Who the “we” is, and when alternatives to “Merry Christmas” went from Eisenhower-approved to liberal doublespeak, is left to the right-wing imagination.

In a similar vein as that Eisenhower greeting is the larger mid-century cultural phenomenon of the Jewish Christmas song. In some ways, this is a microcosm of what was best about the ’50s; out of the rubble of the depression and the war, a relatively easygoing, vaguely Christian but functionally secular national culture arose. There is more outrage today over plain red cups and “holiday” catalogs than there ever was over Jewish songmakers who turned Christmas into something about chestnuts and shiny-nosed reindeers. And that’s exactly as it should be; Christmas may be about Christ, but in a great big diverse society there is no reason why it may not also be expanded and universalized—as C.S. Lewis understood.

It should be noted that a close look through the history of Christmas in America dispels the idea that conflict only arose in the last two or three decades. For example, just as some Birchers viewed Eisenhower as a closet communist, there were indeed far-right, anti-Semitic Christians, like firebrand Gerald L.K. Smith, who saw the secular version of Christmas as a “Jewish plot” to erase Christ from the public square. There were also plenty of disputes and court cases over public displays involving nativity scenes, for example, as far back as the middle of the 1950s. (No such case reached the Supreme Court, however, until 1984). But all of this was marginal in those days. If the Jewish-plot theory had been mainstream, secular holiday albums would not have abounded in those years, and Rudolph would have never made the jump from department-store issued children’s book to beloved holiday special.

The mid-century cultural moment was unstable and is not coming back; indeed, very few popular Christmas songs have been written after the end of the postwar era. But we can more correctly view the Jewish Christmas song of the past not as an appropriation of a Christian holiday, but as an act of positive cultural creation and accommodation. What we got from that arrangement was a body of work that to this day brightens the season, complements rather than denies its specific religious meaning, and avoided a culture war in a country that was sadly not ready to fully accept Jews.

In later years, the imagined villain of secular Judaism has been replaced by the somewhat more real villain of killjoy atheists, who helped spark the exaggerated “war on Christmas” narrative with their anti-creche lawsuits and “This Season, Celebrate Reason” billboards, which, despite their diametrically opposite message, resemble nothing so much as a “THERE IS EVIDENCE FOR GOD” billboard along the Interstate.

The Randians, not to be outdone, are happy to reject the Christians and the anti-Christians, and remind us that Christmas was really about selfishly buying cheap junk all along.

All of this is happening in a country in which reducing religion to Christians and Jews makes as little sense as reducing race to black and white. Our diversity is vast, and arguing over which holiday greeting a minimum wage checkout clerk has to say 1,000 times a day is a ticket to irrelevance. “Merry Christmas” should come naturally and joyfully, a part of a shared national experience; it should not, like Ted Cruz’s “radical Islamic terrorism,” be a talisman and litmus test in a culture war.

In fact, we can no longer afford a culture war at all. The only one of C.S. Lewis’s three Christmases that has survived the last 60 years unscathed is the one he detested. As our cultural squabbles drag on, we have allowed the market to appropriate and expropriate the Christmas holiday of much of its religious and civic meaning. Whether you’re on Team Jesus or Team Santa, that’s nothing to be merry about.

theamericanconservative.com

British premier Theresa May, with her angular facial features, stern matron-like persona and suggestive surname, even resonates like a Dickens’ character. Her dithering and fumbling over Britain’s exit from the European Union is a mixture of comedy, treachery and tragedy.

May went to Brussels last week with cap-in-hand to beg for last-minute concessions from the EU leaders, only to be told – politely – to shut up and get on with it. There would be no renegotiation of the withdrawal plan which she agreed to only last month. May now has the unenviable task of trying to get her Brexit roadmap passed by British parliamentarians. She cancelled tabling a vote last week, fearing that it would be resoundingly rejected by lawmakers.

With the Christmas parliamentary recess looming, it looks like May will have to wait until mid-January before finally letting parliament have a say. If rejected, which looks likely, then Britain could face a no-deal crash out of the EU on the deadline for divorce set for March 29. But such is the alarm among the public, politicians and media about a “hard Brexit”, and the dire economic repercussions of that, there may be a dramatic U-turn in store, in which a second national referendum is called on whether Britain should leave the EU or not. In short, Brexit may not happen after all.

This week, however, Prime Minister May categorically ruled out calls for a second referendum, saying that it would cause “irreparable damage to the integrity of our politics”. She said it would “break the public faith” in British democracy. In the Brexit referendum held in June 2016, a total of 17.4 million people (52 per cent of the electorate) cast their votes for Britain to leave the European bloc. The remain vote was 16.1 million (48 per cent).

Thus if a second referendum were held and the vote was reversed, then the Brexit divorce mess might be averted, but the damage to Britain’s image of democracy will be shattered. It could even trigger civil unrest and sow deeper, more bitter divisions that have already fractured the so-called United Kingdom.

Britain is caught in a fiendish dilemma. There seems to be no good options available. If it crashes out of the EU that will cause uproar in half of the population. If it aborts Brexit and returns to the European fold with tail between legs, that will cause similar uproar in the other half of the population.

Back to our Dickens’ seasonal theme what is striking in this conundrum is how much the predicament is doomed by ghosts from the past which are paralyzing forward movement.

The first of these ghosts is the 2008 global financial crisis, the mishandling of which by the British governments and the EU executive was a major factor in why the Brexit vote manifested. Since the global crash, it has been the mass of working people who have been made to pay for the failure in finance capitalism. Relentless polices of economic austerity – instead of punitive reparations imposed on big banks – have alienated ordinary citizens in Britain and across the EU towards the “establishment”. This seems particularly acute in Britain because successive Conservative governments there have pursued such stringent austerity economic policies. So, when the Brexit referendum was held on June 23, 2016, the political establishments both in London and Brussels were primed for a giant public rebuke. That came in the form of a resounding Leave vote.

An anti-immigrant sentiment and desire for “control over our borders” was also a factor in the Brexit vote. But again that factor was a direct result of policy. The illegal wars that Britain and other European NATO members followed the United States in waging, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and, covertly, in Syria, all fed into a phenomenal migration challenge across Europe.

In Britain, Labour and Conservative governments alike were all complicit in these criminal military escapades of regime change. But it was the Tory government of former Prime Minister David Cameron that bears much responsibility from taking a lead role in the NATO war to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 which opened up mass migration routes to Europe. It was Cameron who assented to holding the Brexit referendum for his own selfish political reasons (more on that below). The vote for Brexit was at least partly a result of Cameron’s warmongering in Libya and other illegal British wars elsewhere.

On the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in Britain which partly drove the vote to leave the EU, the present prime minister is also culpable. Before taking over as premier from Cameron in July 2016 (he quit over the Brexit result), Theresa May served as the Home Secretary (interior minister). During her six-year post as a hawkish interior minister, British government policy became sharply hostile towards illegal migrants. It was May who launched public campaigns warning undocumented migrants to “go home or face jail”.

Rather than being held to account for its criminal wars in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa – and the cause of refugee flows – the British government opted instead to criminalize undocumented migrants. That inevitably fed into British public sentiment either fearing or loathing a perception of foreigners flooding into the country. That prejudice was vented at EU membership when the Brexit referendum was held. May and her Conservative governments had unleashed those sentiments with cynical dog-whistling racial politics.

Another ghost from the past was the rise of the anti-EU, anti-immigrant United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP). UKIP has since fizzled into near-oblivion. But at one stage, the Eurosceptic party threatened to draw large votes from the main rightwing party, the Conservatives. In a desperate move to fend off the UKIP, former Conservative premier David Cameron made a manifesto promise in the 2015 national elections that, if he was reelected, his government would hold a referendum on EU membership. Cameron thus used the Brexit issue as a way to keep his party in power and to push back the electoral threat of UKIP. A year later, the Brexit vote then threw British politics into the turmoil that is ongoing.

Finally, our remaining ghost from the past goes back a little further in history. It is the legacy of British imperialist misdeeds in Ireland. Britain’s violation of Ireland’s sovereignty and its criminal partitioning (1921) of the neighboring island nation is the predominant spanner in the Brexit wheels. The London government cannot exit Europe easily – indeed it will be mission impossible – because of the historic problem concerning a British-imposed border in Ireland.

The majority of people on the island of Ireland, both in the southern state, the Republic of Ireland, and in the northern British jurisdiction of Northern Ireland, do not want the return of a hard border. Neither does the European Union want to create such a frontier, which would cause immense disruption to the entire Irish economy. But if there is no border, then part of the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) will in effect remain integrated with the EU in terms of customs and trade. For the Brexiteers in Britain that is anathema. The insoluble problem of the Irish border is why the Brexit process will forever be strapped with interminable wrangling and why the current British political crisis will continue indefinitely.

The miserly past of British politicians has come back to haunt the present cohort into paralysis over Brexit.

Unlike for the repentant mean Scrooge character in Dickens’ novel, there seems to be no redemption in the offing for the incumbent British political class.

To a nation of snowflakes, Christmas has become yet another trigger word. The latest Christmas casualties in the campaign to create one large national safe space are none other than the beloved animated classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (denounced for promoting bullying and homophobia) which first aired on television on December 6, 1964, and the Oscar-winning tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (accused of being a date rape anthem) crooned by everyone from Dean Martin to Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel in the movie Elf.

Also on the endangered species Christmas list are such songs as “Deck the Halls” (it supposedly promotes “gay” apparel), “Santa Baby” (it has been denounced for “slut shaming”), and “White Christmas” (perceived as being racist).

One publishing company even re-issued their own redacted version of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem “Twas the night before Christmas” in order to be more health conscious: the company edited out Moore’s mention of Santa smoking a pipe (“The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, / And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath.”)

Oh the horror.

After a year plagued with its fair share of Scrooges and Grinches and endless months of being mired in political gloom and doom, we could all use a little Christmas cheer right now.

Unfortunately, the politically charged Right and Left have been trying to score points off each other for so long, using whatever means available, that even Christmas has been weaponized.

Yet just because the War on Christmas has been adopted as a war cry by Donald Trump doesn’t mean that it’s not real.

Indeed, in its “Constitutional Q&A: Twelve Rules of Christmas,” The Rutherford Institute points out that some communities, government agencies and businesses have gone to great lengths to avoid causing offense over Christmas.

Examples abound.

In many of the nation’s schools, Christmas carols, Christmas trees, wreaths and candy canes have been banned as part of the effort to avoid any reference to Christmas, Christ or God. One school even outlawed the colours red and green, saying they were Christmas colours and, thus, illegal.

A New Jersey middle school cancelled a field trip to attend a performance of a play based on Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” because some might have found it “offensive.”

In Texas, a teacher who decorated her door with a scene from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” including a scrawny tree and Linus, was forced to take it down lest students be offended or feel uncomfortable.

In Connecticut, teachers were instructed to change the wording of the classic poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to “Twas the Night Before a Holiday.”

In Virginia, a high school principal debated about whether he could mention Santa or distribute candy canes given that they were symbols of Christmas.

In Massachusetts, a fourth-grade class was asked to list 25 things that reminded them of Christmas. When one young student asked if she could include “Jesus,” her teacher replied that she could get fired if Christmas’ namesake appeared on the list.

Things are not much better outside the schools.

While the First Amendment Establishment Clause prohibits the government from forcing religion on people or endorsing one particular religion over another, there is no legitimate legal reason why people should not be able to celebrate the season freely or wish each other a Merry Christmas or even mention the word Christmas.

The Rutherford Institute’s “Twelve Rules of Christmas” guidelines are helpful in dealing with folks who subscribe to the misguided notion that the law requires anything Christmas in nature be banned from public places.

Yet here’s the thing about this so-called War on Christmas that people don’t seem to get: while Christmas may be the “trigger” for purging Christmas from public places, government forums and speech—except when it profits Corporate America—it is part and parcel of the greater trend in recent years to whittle away at free speech and trample the First Amendment underfoot.

We are witnessing the emergence of an unstated yet court-sanctioned right, one that makes no appearance in the Constitution and yet seems to trump the First Amendment at every turn: the right to not be offended.

This is censorship, driven by a politically correct need to pander to those who are easily offended.

Mind you, the government doesn’t care about Christmas. It cares about control. By government, I’m talking about the entrenched government bureaucracy that really calls the shots no matter what political party controls Congress and the White House.

The police state wants us to be a nation of snowflakes, snitches and book burners: a legalistic, intolerant, elitist, squealing bystander nation willing to turn on each other and turn each other in for the slightest offence.

This plays perfectly into the Deep State’s efforts to keep the citizenry at odds with each other and incapable of presenting a united front against the threats posed by the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.

You want to know why this country is in the state it’s in?

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the answer is the same no matter what the problem might be, whether it’s the economy, government corruption, police brutality, endless wars, censorship, falling literacy rates, etc.: every one of these problems can be sourced back to the fact that “we the people” have stopped thinking for ourselves and relinquished responsibility for our lives and well-being to a government entity that sees us only as useful idiots.

We are creating a schizophrenic world for our children to grow up in, and it is neither healthy nor will it produce the kind of people who will be able to face the challenges of a future ruled by a totalitarian regime.

You can’t sanitize reality. You can’t scrub out of existence every unpleasant thought or idea. You can’t legislate tolerance. You can’t create enough safe spaces to avoid the ugliness that lurks in the hearts of men and women. You can’t fight ignorance with the weapons of a police state.

What you can do, however, is step up your game.

Opt for kindness over curtness, and civility over censorship. Choose peace over politics, and freedom over fascism. Find common ground with those whose politics or opinions or lifestyles may not jive with your own.

Do your part to make the world a little brighter and a little lighter, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have a chance of digging our way out of this hole.

truepublica.org.uk

In addition to the calamitous diplomatic fallout, which we assessed here last week, Pope Francis, the archbishop of Canterbury and the leaders of Christian churches and communities in Jerusalem and throughout the region all opposed the decision. As Amr Mostafa reported from Cairo, Egypt’s Muslim, Coptic and secular groups united in opposition to the Jerusalem decision. US Vice President Mike Pence, an evangelical Christian, who had to postpone his travel to the region because of congressional action on tax reform, would have been poorly received, if received at all, by representatives of Christian communities.

Despite the developments on Jerusalem, there was still joy in Bethlehem, where, as Ibrahim Abdelhadi reported, the “Al-Mahd Church, better known as the Church of the Nativity, is greeting Christmas with a fresh face this year following a major rehabilitation of its roof and ancient mosaics.”

A UNESCO World Heritage site and, Abelhadi said, reportedly the world's oldest church in daily use, “Al-Mahd's original basilica was built in the fourth century by Roman Emperor Constantine I above a cave where Virgin Mary is said to have given birth to Jesus. In the early medieval period, other ecclesiastical buildings were incorporated into the original site. Consequently, today the Church of the Nativity is overseen by members of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Custody of the Holy Land and the Armenian Church. It's considered one of the most important Christian churches in the world after the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.”

Unfortunately, one of the most revered churches in Turkey has fallen upon harder times. Mahmut Bozarslan reported that the centuries-old Surp Giragos Armenian Church in Diyarbakir, which had been restored after years of disuse and abuse in 2012, only to be damaged and desecrated as a result of the fighting in 2015 between Turkish security and Kurdistan Workers Party forces, has suffered subsequent vandalism and desecration. Bozarslan wrote that for church board member Gaffur Turkay, “The fact that hammer-wielding vandals could enter and damage the house of worship while members of the church board could only go there after receiving permission is a bitter pill to swallow.”

The defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria offers some welcome good news, allowing those displaced by the war to return and rebuild their cities, towns and villages. In Iraq, as Omar Sattar reported in October, there are about 450,000 Christians with varying political alignments. Sattar wrote, “Iraqi Christians' pursuit of living in security and having their civil rights safeguarded exceeds their search for a political and administrative independence. This is due to the harassment they have suffered at the hands of armed groups and militias, as well as their political exploitation by various Iraqi parties that view the minority card to be of a major importance in acquiring land and obtaining international support and sympathy.”

It is perhaps fitting that we close our column with a return to Aleppo, where there have been Christmas celebrations and a proliferation of Christmas trees, as citizens of different faiths use the holiday to express hope for an end to war and a return to normalcy. Last month, parts of the ancient souk reopened. The slow turnaround in Aleppo, while fragile (there was an attack by armed groups this week), reminds us of what we wrote here almost two years ago, at the height of the war: “A Syrian government victory in Aleppo could be the beginning of the end of the sectarian mindset that would have been alien to the city prior to 2011. There is no more appropriate city to begin Syria’s healing. A Syrian government victory in Aleppo will make it harder to rationalize Western backing for jihadi groups who want to keep up the fight against long odds in the rest of the country. IS and al-Qaeda may prefer, over time, to begin to relocate to Libya and other countries where they can avoid the pounding from the US-led anti-IS coalition and Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian forces. This may already be happening, and if so, it is to be cheered by those who seek a unified, secular and nonsectarian Syria, as outlined in the Vienna Communique, and as is Aleppo’s tradition.”

Pope Francis’ Christmas greetings this week offered a sense of hope for the Middle East based on shared respect and compassion, when he said, “Those who are different, either culturally or religiously, should not be seen or treated as enemies, but rather welcomed as fellow travelers, in the genuine conviction that the good of each resides in the good of all. Sincerity of intentions, because dialogue, as an authentic expression of our humanity, is not a strategy for achieving specific goals, but rather a path to truth, one that deserves to be undertaken patiently, in order to transform competition into cooperation.”

al-monitor.com

Under the disguise of Christmas, U.S. President Donald Trump sneakingly gifted Ukraine with American lethal defensive weaponry; Russia has responded warning the United States that a red line has been crossed.

The deepstate (military industrial complex) elite’s spokesman, Senator John McCain of the Armed Services Committee, and neocons once again are trying to inflame a war by convincing U.S. President Donald Trump to send weapons to Ukraine. It undoubtedly will be seen as an “aggressive” move against Moscow, as intended.

“The reported decision to authorize the sale of sniper rifles and ammunition must only be a first step,” McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. “I urge the president to authorize additional sales of defensive lethal weapons, including anti-tank munitions, and to fully utilize security assistance funds provided by the Congress to enable Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

[RELATED: McCain Says “We Must Fight Crackpot Conspiracy Theories” Despite Promoting The Biggest One: A New World Order]

The Eastern European country has been reliant on support from Washington since pro-Western government forces overthrew the Ukrainian leadership in 2013, as warned by Ukraine Deputy Oleg Tsarov prior. Paid CIA snipers hired by Maidan leaders subsequently shot at protesters and police, according to Polish former presidential candidate Janusz Korwin-Mikke and Urmas Paet.

The audio uploaded online showed Victoria Nuland, the then top U.S. diplomat in Europe, and Geoff Pyatt, the U.S. envoy to Kiev, discussing the merits of Ukraine’s various opposition figures and if things were in place. In the recording, Nuland can also be heard saying “f**k the EU,” if they aren’t ready for their alleged plot and to go ahead without them.

Estonian Foreign Minister and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Urmas Paet, c0llaborated and confirmed that snipers had shot at both police and protesters in a conversation with EU foreign Security Policy Catherine Ashton when an additional tape was leaked by Officers of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) loyal to the ousted President Viktor Yanukovich. Paet said that snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were hired by Maidan leaders.

In fact, Nuland even admitted the subversive actions the U.S. was taking in Ukraine for the past few decades during a public speech where she stated the “U.S. has spent five billion dollars ($5,000,000,000) to subvert Ukraine,” assuring her listeners that there are prominent businessmen and government officials who support the U.S. project to tear Ukraine away from its historic relationship with Russia and into the U.S. sphere of interest (via “Europe”).

The U.S. would never admit publicly that it was involved in Ukraine. Under former President Barack Obama the policy was to not send weapons to Ukraine with the exception of allowing some private contractors to send small arms; Trump is changing that, signaling a major shift in U.S. policy.

Instead, the Obama administration opted to covertly send the Russians (a supposed “enemy” of the U.S. at the time) Uranium through the Uranium One deal and later sanctioned Moscow after annexing Crimea. The uranium sold could have been used to make bombs to use in Ukraine.

That deal is now under scrutiny by the Trump administration Justice Department amid deciding to approve a commercial license authorizing the sale of $41.5 million of weaponry including Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and associated accessories to Ukraine, the Washington Post reported.

According to a Trump state department spokesperson, Heather Nauert, the decision was “part of our effort to help Ukraine build its long-term defense capacity, to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to deter further aggression.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov responded stating the U.S. decision will only make the conflict more deadly and suggested that Russia could be forced to retaliate He also said the U.S. can no longer cast itself as a mediator.

“It’s not a mediator. It’s an accomplice in fueling the war,” Ryabkov said in a statement.

Thanking the U.S. for its support, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko addressed the concerns over how the weapons would be used.

“American weapons in the hands of Ukrainian soldiers are not for an offensive, but for a decisive rebuff of the aggressor, the protection of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, as well as for effective self-defense,” he wrote on Facebook. “It is also a trans-Atlantic vaccination against the Russian virus of aggression.”

The Washington Post added that the timing of approving this deal and another sale in Canada is no mere coincidence.

Activist Post reported in late August that the Trump administration was considering sending weapons to Ukraine after Kiev reported 3,000 Russian troops in the country in what we said would be “the words heard around the world and the move that starts WW3.”

U.S Secretary of Defense James Mattis stated the U.S.’s position that Russia has not abided by the Minsk ceasefire agreement meant to end separatist violence in eastern Ukraine.

“Despite Russia’s denials, we know they are seeking to redraw international borders by force, undermining the sovereign and free nations of Europe,” Mattis told reporters.

Trump has previously accused Russia of taking Crimea by force in a series of tweets and his White House stated that the U.S. president expected the annexed Black Sea peninsula to be returned to Ukraine, Reuters reported.

“It’s really 19^th century behavior in the 21st century. You just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests.” -John Kerry, “Meet the Press”, 2nd March 2014.

There has been a searing irony to Christmas since August 1990 and the decimating embargo on Iraq. It marked the beginning of the destruction of the region where the three Abrahamic religions were born at Ur in southern Iraq, where the Garden of Eden is believed to have flourished at Al-Qurnah, translation “connection” or “joint”, since it is where the Biblical Tigris and Euphrates rivers join.

In Al-Qurnah an ancient jujube tree – a fruit species (image right), cultivation of which is believed to go back to 900 BCE – was celebrated as the actual Biblical Tree of Knowledge.

Nearby is Babylon, found in the Books of Genesis, Peter and Revelations.

Neighbouring Syria, is also part of the “Cradle of Civilization”, integral to Biblical narrative.

Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount (Mount Hermon) which according to the Book of Matthew included:

“Syria, you are the cradle of the prophets and apostles and the center that spreads the gospel from Antioch in Syria to the world, and paved the way of the Forefathers of the Church to continue.”

St Paul of course converted on the road to Damascus – where he was actually headed to persecute Christians not to become one of them.

Geographically next door to Syria is what remains of Israeli occupied Palestine, Christ’s birthplace in Bethlehem, where, at what is now the Church of the Nativity (image left), He was believed born.

Above are just a few of the jewels of a region now decimated by that created by George W. Bush’s and Tony Blair’s “Crusade,” not to mention Obama and Cameron’s “humanitarian bombings” of the Land of two Rivers.

Ur was vandalized by the US army, who arrived with Bibles in vast stocks, missionaries and plans for proselytizing those who had nurtured and stewarded the region’s wonders of all religions for centuries.

Al-Qurna was stormed and devastatingly damaged by British, Lithuanian and Danish troops, the Tree of Knowledge whose legend and life seemingly spanned the mists of time, died, near certainly from the poisonous pollution of battle, more poisonous even than that which destroyed over half all fauna and flora after the Desert Storm 1991 onslaught, leaving the soil dead and infertile for years afterwards.

Syria’s tragedy in the ongoing Crusade, determination to redraw the map of the Middle East and steal all natural resources rather than purchase them, is outside the scope of this article.

However, Mount Hermon is now part of the buffer zone between Syria and Israeli occupied territory and the highest permanently manned United Nations position on earth. “Jesus wept” comes to mind.

As for Bethlehem’s “Little Town” so central during the Christmas period, it is prisoner to a wall eight meters high, which:

“snakes through and around Bethlehem, disrupting social, religious, cultural and economic life.” (1)

At Al Quds University last week, the most poignant of Christmas trees was unveiled to “Absent Friends”, attended by the Mufti of Bethlehem, Sheikh Abdul Majid Amarna, University’s President, Imad Abu Kishk and Greek Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna. The tree was decorated with photographs of those killed by Israeli settlers and Israeli security forces (demonstrating) unity between Christian and Muslim students. It received predictable criticism from Israeli media. (2)

The tree is a microcosm of the unity to be found across the region and the world between all faiths and none. So where did this rabid Islamophobia, as demonstrated in swathes of mainstream Western media and by politicians suddenly come from?

It came primarily from a forty-two million dollar fund from seven foundations (3) read and all will become crystal clear. Some excellent links also to be found at (4) and the CIA’s input (5.)

However, it was the Orthodox Church of the Holy Land which first spotted the dangers of a creeping hate campaign, responding on 31st March 2003, as the bombs fell on Iraq, by excommunicating Tony Blair, his then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, George W. Bush and his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, from the Church of the Nativity, for life. (6)

Blair, Straw and Bush all declare passionate Christian faith, with Bush and Blair stating they “prayed together” prior to illegally decimating Abraham’s birth country.

“A spokesman of the Orthodox Church in the Holy Land, Archimandrite Attallah Hanna declared that U.S. President George Bush, his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw have all been banned from visiting the traditional birth place of Christ in Bethlehem.”

Hanna described both Bush and Blair as “excommunicates.” (7)

David Cameron has also expressed an “evangelical passion” for Christianity as he plots to further destroy Syria. With any luck he’ll be the next to be banned.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently said: “The world is over-armed and peace is under funded.”

If you are yearning for peace this Christmas, seeking peaceful ammunition to argue for change and appreciate Global Research giving the facts behind the headlines, please consider donating any amount, however small to Global Research so this valuable resource can continue.

Global Research is committed to Reversing the Tide of War and Restoring the “Real Spirit of Christmas”, which lest we forget is “Peace on Earth and Good Will to all  Humanity”.

Obama, Cameron, Hollande et al are war criminals. They have violated the Spirit of Christmas.

Seasons Greetings – and may we pray and work that never again may a Christmas tree have to be decorated with victims killed in our name …