I think the “war on Christmas” thing is pretty silly.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the point of this piece. As Dan pointed out about the tone, I’m treating the War on Christmas™ with all the seriousness it deserves.

Instead of watching Christmas services on TBN, I’ll be watching secular films like A Christmas Story, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and James Bond movies (don’t ask).

I’m a Christian, and I’ll be doing the same. I loathe televised church services. Something about the camera makes all the rough points in the presentation all the more obvious. Especially the singing, in a wide variety of keys. I suppose televised church services are useful for shut-ins, but I really hope I never decline to the point where that’s all I can get.

All in all, I think the “war on Christmas” thing is pretty silly. It’s mainly people who enjoy being righteously indignant finding something to be offended about and then taking it to its logical extreme. So power to you! Ridicule is, in my opinion, the only useful response to the fundies in this case.

Regardless of what you do this time of year, I wish you the best. I have seriously enjoyed talking with you over at my blog. I am certainly not going to tell you (or anyone else that does not hold my beliefs) how you should ‘celebrate’ (if at all) this time of year. But for me this season represents a time of sharing love, peace, and hope. So please accept my wishes for you to have a great one regardles of how you celebrate…

even though there are no Biblical references to such.

And even in the face of well-known textual evidence to the contrary. And I don’t mean things like the passing reference to how the flocks had just been sheared, or the harvest brought in, or whatever it was. I mean, shepherds sleeping outdoors? In December?

Christmas should not be a national holiday

Meh. Arguably yes, though I suspect that if you brought the matter to court the judge would say that the right time to complain was when Christmas was first made a federal holiday, and that by now it’s become part of the natural culture, just as courts said about the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas capitol lawin in Austin.

Secondly, maybe I’m just a slacker, but I like holidays. If you want to change the federal holiday from Christmas to Generic End-of-Year Holiday, that works for me, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of me celebrating Christmas the way I want.

Thirdly, given the above, perhaps the best approach is to continue secularizing Christmas. After all, Halloween isn’t restricted to just those who worship the Celtic gods. These days it’s all about costumes and candy.

Perhaps in the future, more and more non-Christians will celebrate Christmas (or, by the year 3001, Ecksmas, if you believe Futurama). And some future version of Jack Chick or Adnan Oktar will be sending out spittle-flecked tracts telling Muslim or Scientologist or Pastafarian families that they shouldn’t be celebrating a holiday with roots in Christian mythology.

Christmas should not be a national holiday…no more than declaring Hanukkah a national holiday, or Kwanza for that matter.

The FSM has a lap?