Deborah Lipp

One of the local TV stations used to say, this time of year, “Merry Christmas. And Happy Chanukkah to all our Jewish friends.”

Gods, I hated that. It’s the very epitome of unconscious marginalization. I mean, more than half the people to whom I expressed disgust just didn’t get it. “It’s nice,” they’d say, “It’s inclusive.” Not so much. The implicit statement is: There’s an Us and a Them. Merry Christmas to Us. Happy Chanukah to Those Others.

When they changed the message, maybe ten years ago, I felt vindicated. It proved I wasn’t a whacko who was offended for no good reason; someone else saw the problem and made the change.

I have lots of non-Christian friends. Most of them are Pagans who were raised some version of Christian or Christian/agnostic (i.e. raised by nominally Christian parents but without religious education) or Christian/atheist. Some are Hindus raised in India, or Jews raised in Israel. Allow me to assure you that if you are one of these people; someone raised in your culture’s dominant faith, you just don’t get it.

I remember being one of exactly two Jewish kids in my middle school (in a town that is now very heavily Jewish, by the way). Every year it’s, Do I sing Silent Night in the choir, or do I single myself out by not singing or by objecting, or do I make a non-statement statement by merely pretending to sing? (Me, I’m a single myself out kinda gal, and my mom was really supportive about speaking to the school about their Christian agenda). When the class project is making Christmas trees, you have to raise your hand if you want to make a menorah instead (so that everyone knows who the Jews are, of course). Or maybe you have to raise your hand and ask if you can please make something else instead.

So you grow up knowing I am not one of these people. I am not part of this culture. I don’t fit in. Which, okay, who wants to fit in? Kids do. And tired adults do. Do you know how exhausting it can be to constantly have to explain, No, that’s not me/us, don’t assume I’m part of your frickin mainstream?

The Radical Right that is promoting their ridiculous War on Christmas doesn’t believe there is a real war. They don’t believe they are being oppressed. But they know there’s lots of political capital in having an angry base. They know they have to keep the Right angry, and it’s hard to convince people they’re angry when they run the country, control the media and the meme, and own all the businesses. So they created a war on gays and gay marriage. But the thing is, despite swings up and down, they’re losing that war, and they’re losing a bit of their base by fighting it. So they needed a new war, They needed one where the base wouldn’t erode. And who will walk away from a War to Save Christmas? I mean!

It’s easy to convince people that they’re oppressed if you hammer the point hard enough. My experience is that Left-leaning, free-thinking people who were raised as part of a majority are pretty clueless as to what it means to be made to stand in the cultural corner. And that’s the Left! So it’s not at all hard to whip up the Right.

See, it’s nice that the culture is more inclusive. We talk all the time about how it’s right and just and so on, but it’s also just nice. Nice to go into a store and have them say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and think they’re saying it to me, instead of thinking, “They don’t mean me” or “They’re leaving me out again” and getting exhausted. Again.

John Gibson and Jerry Falwell probably don’t mean to make little kids feel left out. They probably don’t mean to embarrass kids by singling them out as different in school, just because they’re Jewish or Hindu. They just want their little war to drum up the base. But that’s what they’ll do. They’re not just teaching “the Right” to be angry about Christmas. They’re teaching parents. And those parents will teach their kids, and those kids will go to school and fight their frickin War by belittling other kids. That’s what bigotry is.