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| City Christmas tree in Greene Square |
Ten years ago this month, Holy Mountain, still in its rookie year, examined gentrification, news coverage of climate change, the book Arcadia by Lauren Groff, and the song "Same Love" by Macklemore and Lewis. Amidst all this there was time to question the "war on Christmas" being promoted by cultural conservatives.
What a time warp! When was the last time you thought about this? Maybe in 2016, when Donald Trump said he would make it okay to say "Merry Christmas" again? Now, as he campaigns to return to the White House, as well as to stay one step ahead of the law, he is claiming that as one of his administration's accomplishments.
If we have Donald Trump to thank for putting all this silliness to rest, then that's one in the credit column for him. More probably, the moral panic over the war on Christmas reached its expiry date, as moral panics will. The "war on Christmas" joined death panels, the Honduran "caravan," the video game Grand Theft Auto, gangsta rap, thugs on PCP, and rock 'n' roll on the scrap heap of moral panic history.
Ten years ago, I found several books for sale describing the liberal menace to this beloved holiday. Today, the war on Christmas books are mostly spoofs (McCown 2021) and romance novels (Campbell 2023).
If only it were that simple! Like the Hydra, when one moral panic dies, two rise to take its place. Today we are treated to regular freakouts about trans girls playing sports, groomer-librarians in schools, refugees bearing fentanyl, vaccine-pushing bureaucrats from the Deep State, and anything or anyone that can be connected to the word "woke."
The point of all these is the same: if the peddlers of this dreck can make us afraid of each other, we won't have the energy to work for a better, more inclusive world. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," wrote Robert Frost, but something there is that does love a wall. Whatever it is, it is not our friend, it is why we cannot have nice things, and we need to stop falling for this baloney.
SEE ALSO: Philip Bump, "Welcome to War on Christmas Season!" Washington Post, 14 November 2023,
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