'tis the season for idolatry

While the US fights two wars abroad, has to come to terms a much bigger issue with torture than I think anyone is really accepting, massive government bloat, and that nasty economic bugger, neo-cons are regressing into petty social conservative issues. In the process they are totally missing the issue and actually creating the problem they want to solve.

"Sen. Chris Buttars wants Utah's Legislature to declare its opposition to the "war on Christmas."

The West Jordan Republican is sponsoring a resolution encouraging retailers to embrace Christmas in their promotions rather than the generic "holidays."

"It would encourage the use of 'Merry Christmas,'" Buttars said of the non-binding statement that is still being drafted. "I'm sick of the Christmas wars — we're a Christian nation and ought to use the word."

This has nothing to do with whatever you believe about being a "Christian nation" as if the majority can override the existence and regard of other holidays and beliefs. The problem is that it all has to do with how many goods retailers can sell to as many customers as possible. The problem is the absolute necessity for retailers to dump inventories that are bloated at the end of the year and re-coup losses. Why the hell else do we start seeing Christmas decorations going up the day after Halloween?

What Buttars (which I cannot help but associate with the South park character) is really asking us to do is reinforce the association of Christmas with the drive of retailers to sell goods and in so doing craft desire among consumers for those good through marketing. The insistence of using "Merry Christmas" in marketing only clarifies the nature of Christmas as an empty consumerist farm where the pigs of gluttony can have their feast on millions of dollars of crap they do not need. In the process, the remembrance of a God who so loved the world that he came in the form of a defenseless infant motivated only by love is denigrated and cast into a false idol that only a culture of abundance can offer up.

What Buttars wants is idolatry plain and simple. Christians should be happy that "Happy Holidays", "Sparkle Season", and other useless brands to bolster profits are used rather than Merry Christmas or Happy Christmas as the Europeans have it. Christians should rebel against any desire to link Christianity with consumerism and the use of Merry Christmas as the sole means to bolster profits and sell off inventory is the largest progenitor of that urge short of the health and wealth so-called Gospel that Dollar, Hinn, Osteen, Myers, and Copeland among others preach.

So you will hear that there is an assault on Christmas from the liberal gay-loving, prayer-hating, gun-despising, Christian-bashing, socialist left from Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh and others as if they speak for Christianity on the matter. They have absolutely no damn clue what they are really doing. They are the ones who are screwing up Christmas by insisting on its brand superiority rather than focusing on its religious significance. The only outcome for this absurd insistence on making Merry Christmas the only operative term this season is to destroy the very message that God was trying to get through our own ignorance and greed. This whole neo-con "social conservative" agenda is just stupid, a total farce, and only destructive to Christianity.

HT: The Rev's Rumbles

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