Bizarro is brought to you today by The War on Christmas.Today's cartoon is from this time last year and is one of my favorites. I like the gag but I also like that people on both sides of the
holiday fence can relate to it.
Long before I was interested in politics I wondered about the contradiction of "separation of church and state" and national holidays like Xmas. Constitutionally, this is clearly not a
"Christian nation," as so many right-wingers are fond of calling it, but at the same time we have many laws and
government customs that are based entirely on Christianity. Maybe there is a reason other than the Bible that I'm missing, but why can't a person have more than one legal spouse, as long as all spouses are
consenting adults? Why is Xmas a legal holiday for
government workers, but Yom Kippur is only a holiday if you're
Jewish? And the most significant current example of course, is our denial of
basic rights to gay couples.
Each year I get one of those
Christmas War emails that people circulate about how "it's a
Christmas tree, not a
Holiday tree, not a
Hannukah bush, not a
Quanza" something-or-other... I usually respond by sending to the same list an explanation about the
pagan origins of what is now called a Christmas tree. If you're going to be sanctimonious, seems you should at least have the facts.
Most
rational people don't take this so-called
"war on Christmas" seriously, but those who do fear the loss of their right to use government facilities and funds to
celebrate their religion publically. But there are always loopholes. One can always resort to
"Mary and the Magic Baby."
