Admit it—you were curious to know what those ninnies who write B.C. and Mallard Fillmore would do in their Christmas comic strips, weren’t you? They were whining about the War on Christmas, of course. Do they even notice when a brutally godless blog like mine guiltlessly says “Merry Christmas!”, though? No, of course not.
(via Atrios)
My paper doesn’t run Mallard Fillmore anymore, but I saw the BC strip and ignored it, as I always do. I wonder why they’re so obsessed with making a big deal out of a nonexistent issue.
I’m just curious when Christmas stopped being either happy or a holiday.
I flew home from a study abroad program in France this week. On one of my flights in the US I was watching Fox News, you know trying to re-acquaint myself with that certain brand of American crazy. Actual quote that finally made me watch something else: “So, if we put up a holiday tree, that’s okay, but if you put up a nativity scene in a public space it is SUDDENLY religious?!” Well, um, yeah…
I prefer Candorville myself.
I don’t ever recall anyone being offended when I say “Have a good holiday!” or the like. I sometimes wish someone would so I could say something like “Oh OK, have a festive Saturnalia!”
Growing up in Alabama, I always figured that “happy holidays” was the thing you said when you wanted to include New Year’s along with Christmas. Sure, we schoolkids had heard about other festive occasions celebrated at around the same time, so the blanket term might cover them too. . . but I don’t remember anyone giving a damn about it until the professional fear-and-hatred mongers got into the act.
Sweet Great Pumpkin, were all these people dropped on their heads when they were little?
So, given the fact that people in Ireland keep saying “Happy Christmas” instead of “Merry Christmas”(*), can we take this as a sign that Ireland has halfway gone over to our side of the war?
(*)This I only know by virtue of just having spent Christmas there.
Well, I had a pre-holiday post about the Khristmas Kraken…but seems not many folks are not familiar with “Twas the Night Before Krakenmas” — So I posted it in full for you Cephalopodians.
Enjoy! And Wishing you a Happy New Year!
Oops..doubled up on that negative: “Not many folks are not…”
Oh just chalk it up the Queen of Typos! (But you KNOW what I mean.) ;-)
I consider it a truism at this point that while conservatives can be funny, conservative humor rarely is. Because for every PJ O’Rourke, there’s a Johnny Hart, a Bruce Tinsley, a Brad Stine, and a Larry the Cable Guy (the inventor of “redneck blackface”, it seems). Hell, that isn’t even a fair ratio there.
As for Dennis Miller, I look at him roughly in the same way I do Roger Clemens as a Red Sox fan — “What the hell did we ever see in him?” It seems Dennis Miller fans were drinking the Kool-Aid…
PZ,
Check out this video for the real war on Christmas, Santa beat Jesus. Now it’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s turn…
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/345917/santa_vs_the_flying_spaghetti_monster/
I never read them, myself
How about that bastion of conservative thought, the LA Times?
I don’t read the LA Times very frequently, but I did locate this article via a website I’m sure you read often, PZ. ;-)
It’s not fair. Why do the Right-Wing Cartoonists only ever report the bad news from the War on Christmas?
“As for Dennis Miller”
Kornheiser is making me miss him (almost, but not quite).
Additionally, what ever happened to “Season’s Greetings”? Long before the era of political correctness, that was a typical Christmastime slogan, not often spoken, but quite often put up on banners in stores. I never heard of anyone objecting to it.
I liked the part about Tinsely being arrested again for driving while intoxicated. There’s a model Christian for ya.
The “BC” from the 23rd was in a similar vein: One caveman finds a Jesus doll in with the “Holiday Gifts” and asks another caveman what’s he doing there. The other replies, “Well, this is his birthday, you know.” The first asks where he heard that and the other says “I read it somewhere.” (Then there’s some whining about the “Winter Recess Holiday” making Jesus cry.)
What bothered me when I read this (yes, I read “BC”) was that, given Hart’s typical all-so-knowing and bitter Christ-centered sarcasm, it sounds like he’s implying that “somewhere” is the Bible (I mean, what else could it be? seems a little too pointed to be just filler dialog), but of course there is no date given in the Bible for Jesus’ birth except for inferences pointing to Spring.
Hart may be a lesser theologian than Jack Chick, but he should still know that. Is it just that he, after years of suffering under the anti-Christian persecution prevalent in today’s America, has become so cynical and world-weary that everything from him now sounds like shrill sarcasm? Or maybe it — and all of Hart’s work — is a deeper, Colbertesque satire on the ignorance that most Christians have about their own religion and the paranoia with which some view the non-Christian world?
it sounds like he’s implying that “somewhere” is the Bible (I mean, what else could it be?
Given the title of the comic strip, presumably the caveman read about Jesus’s birth in a crystal ball. After all, it would have been, what, how many millennia into the future?
But as for me, though I am not an atheist, I’ll take blasphemous and funny over pious and pinched any day. Those of you who can read German might enjoy this.
Oh, and bbs: good one.
it sounds like he’s implying that “somewhere” is the Bible (I mean, what else could it be?
Given the title of the comic strip, presumably the caveman read about Jesus’s birth in a crystal ball. After all, it would have been, what, how many millennia into the future?
But as for me, though I am not an atheist, I’ll take blasphemous and funny over pious and pinched any day. Those of you who can read German might enjoy this.
Oh, and bbs: good one.
So, given the fact that people in Ireland keep saying “Happy Christmas” instead of “Merry Christmas”(*), can we take this as a sign that Ireland has halfway gone over to our side of the war?
In the original “The Night Before Christmas”, it ends:
“Happy Christmas to all
And to all a good night.”
——————-
Not to mention the song “Happy Holidays” was written in the ’40s.
Maybe ‘Mallard’ is always hung over. That would explain his general crabbiness. I get the feeling that Tinsely is one mean drunk.
Beyond that, I can’t stand people who make a big deal out of Christmas persecution. Then again, the people I’ve noticed doing this at work tend to be the sort that do more whining than working. What a shock…not!
No more than 4 millenia – and possibly 3. Recall the Ussher chronology sets the creation at roughly 4004 BC.
I’ve got to agree with Blake–Happy Holidays includes New years (AND Twelfth Night/Epiphany/Feast of Fools if you like). At least, that’s what I thought as a kid. You said it to people you didn’t see very often.
War on Christmas…? Hell, I find the people who hate pagans and yet put up a tree hilarious. Or in the case of easter, the eggs and the bunnies? yeah, because the bunnies have everything to do with Jesus….