He Wishes You a Merry Christmas

November 15, 2005

by Gary Schneeberger, editor

The Fox News Channel's John Gibson documents the liberal attack on the holiday in his new book, concluding that what secularists really hope to eradicate is Christianity.

Be careful if you're reading this story in a public school, state university, government building or municipal library. You just might find yourself charged with 42 counts of Christmas.

That's how many times the word "Christmas" appears in the headline and paragraphs that make up this piece. And that many mentions of the holiday — well, it's just not fit for public consumption.

If you don't believe it, check out "The War on Christmas," the new book from Fox News Channel anchor John Gibson, host of the "We Report, You Decide" network's midday show "The Big Story." He documents seven particularly egregious examples of anti-Christmas apoplexy — including a Georgia school's refusal even to print the word "Christmas" on its semester calendar — concluding that enough is more than enough.

"Christians have a right to put up a Christmas tree in a school and call it what it is," Gibson writes in the book's introduction. "They shouldn't have to call it a 'paradise tree' or a 'friendship tree' or a 'giving tree' or a 'world tree' or a 'holiday tree' just because it's in a public place."

CitizenLink talked with Gibson last week about the book — and why he's leading the counterattack against America's anti-Christmas troops.

Q. You write that one of the reasons you did the book is because of something that happened at the Fox News Channel — when (network President) Roger Ailes decided to put "Merry Christmas" onscreen.

A. Roger, like me, grew up at a time where it got to be Christmas season and people saw "Merry Christmas" on the TV screen on the three networks all the time. And they also saw "Happy Hanukkah." And, you know, Perry Como would have Christmas specials and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme would have Christmas specials.

The Muppets had Christmas specials. Dared to use the word "Christmas" in front of kids, even.

Right. And then it just went away. It was just gone all of a sudden. And he decided, "Well, I'm going to put 'Merry Christmas' on and 'Happy Hanukkah' on just as station greetings, you know, during a break: "Fox News Channel wishes you a Merry Christmas." "Fox News Channel wishes you a Happy Hanukkah."

And he said that he immediately started getting a lot of mail from people who were amazed that he would do such a thing. And one guy in particular said, "You must be a very brave man to do this." And Roger said, "Now, why would I be a brave man to wish people a 'Merry Christmas'?" So I think that's what piqued his interest in this whole thing, and that was part of the list of complex issues that got me interested in it.

We certainly see stories like those you document all the time — they undoubtedly cross your desk as often as they cross mine. But were you surprised when you started really doing research at just how many of these things there are?

I was. I mean, a lot of people quibble with me about this book. They say, "What war on Christmas? This is bogus." Well, it's not true; it isn't bogus. It goes on way, way more than most people imagine — because most people encounter Christmas at the mall. And there's certainly no diminution of Christmas at the mall — it starts earlier and earlier every year, and there's a great commercial interest in moving goods in the Christmas season.

But if you go around and look at city halls, public libraries, public parks, schools, you find that we have so removed any sign of a devotional Christmas — that is, a truly religious Christmas — that we're into this absolute banning of secular signs of Christmas. No Christian recognizes a Christmas tree as a sign of their religion. But the secularists and the anti-Christmas people have declared it to be a sign of the religion, and therefore have gotten it banned.

Many schools do not even consider putting up a Christmas tree anymore. And many have even gotten to the point where they've told parents, "When you bring the brownies and the goodies for the holiday party at the winter break, make sure there's no red and green paper plates and cups. It's got to be just white." So, we even see red and green banned in school systems around the country.

That really surprised me. We track a lot of this stuff here, but we hadn't heard something as ludicrous as red and green being forbidden. What shocked you the most?

One of the first things you encounter when you look at this is Santa Claus, Christmas trees, red and green, the word "Christmas," none of that is banned by the U.S. Supreme Court under separation of church and state. Nobody gets told, "You can't have a Santa because the Constitution prohibits it." It's just not true. The Supreme Court, in fact, has said just the opposite — that they are secular symbols and they are allowed.

Nonetheless, you'll find people constantly trying to go beyond the Supreme Court and ban things the Court has said are legal. The most shocking example to me was finding this going on at a law school — at the Indiana (University) law school — where the dean felt constrained to take down a Christmas tree when he certainly knew he did not have to. And the professor who complained certainly knew he did not have to. That really kind of blew my mind.

It's one thing if a school board or school superintendent somewhere in Oklahoma gets talked into believing that Santa Claus and Christmas trees are unconstitutional by an ACLU lawyer. But it's another thing if they get talked into that at a law school.

You raise an interesting point that you explore in detail in the book: It's not always someone with a bone to pick with Christians or Christmas who's behind this. Sometimes it's just fear that motivates them, right?

Correct. You know, the hallmark of local government, the thing that local government lives with everyday, is that they're darn near broke. They don't have enough money for police cars, don't have enough money for teachers, don't have enough money for important things. And so, if you come to them and say, "You're about to do something for which I'll sue you and I will win and I will not only stop you from doing it, but I will ask the judge that you pay my legal fees," the easiest thing to do is just cave in. And they do it — a lot.

Look, I'm sure your audience is keenly aware that if the opponents of Christmas were to go to the U.S. Congress and say, "There's a federal holiday called Christmas that's illegal; please cancel it," it would never fly. If they went to the White House and said, "Mr. President, it is an illegal (violation of the) separation of church and state for you to be involved in lighting the national Christmas tree, and there shouldn't be a national Christmas tree," it would never go anywhere. But what they do is go out at the grassroots — to some little school board, to some little public park commissioner, to some librarian and to some city hall manager — and say, "You are doing something unconstitutional, and if you want to take it to court it's going to be very costly." And they get away with it on that level.

So, the villain in all this — the Grinch, if you will — is the American Civil Liberties Union and groups like it?

Well, I've got to say the ACLU has been on the right side of this on some occasions — not very many, but at least one. In Massachusetts last year, a school tried to stop one student from handing another student a little gift that had a Christian message on it. The ACLU and the Bush administration joined in suing the school district and saying, "Look, that is free speech between students. That is not the government involved in religion." They were right, and they won.

That was the ACLU in Massachusetts. The ACLU elsewhere has done the wrong thing, on that same issue. So, there's many (state chapter) ACLUs and not everything they do is wrong, but you're right: Most of the time, when Christmas is getting pushed around, an ACLU lawyer is at the bottom of it.

You alluded earlier to some of the blowback you're getting from critics. I went to your Web site and found this comment from a woman named Sophia: "War on Christmas? Are you kidding me? There are more pressing issues in the world that need to brought up. If someone is in need of a 'war,' why not hunger, crime, social injustice, or racism?" How do you respond to that?

If it's not important to her, fine. She's welcome to go buy somebody else's book. But this is important to a lot of people. I'm getting a lot of e-mail about it. They have been annoyed at this for years; they've been trying to complain about it; they've been shouted down by the secularists — who, by the way, are in the clear minority on this. And they're just sick of it.

But why do you think it's important to have this discussion?

Because I think the war on Christmas really is a war on Christians. In this country, there is a casual and accepted bias — anti-Christian bias — that people engage in. They probably do it because they're opposed to certain conservative evangelical Christians who are out arguing a particular political issue or another, and they find themselves in opposition. And so they find it convenient to just say, "Well, the Christians are arguing this point, and I think they're wrong, so they're wrong about everything." And they take it out on the observance of the Christian religion. And they've gotten away with it.

I find it interesting that you refer to Christians in the arguments you make in your book — and in the points you've made here — in the third person. You're passionate about this issue, but you don't argue that you're one of the guys being marginalized.

Well, I'm not — exactly. I have kind of an oddball history: My mother was raised in a convent. And when she got old enough to get out of the convent to go on to nurses' training just before World War II, she kind of rejected any further contact with the Catholic Church. I was baptized at birth as a Catholic because my grandmother insisted on it, but my mother wouldn't let me near the church again — and I knew, really, very little about it.

I grew up in sort of a non-churchgoing-but-Christian household that observed the major holidays. I was raised around evangelicals. I always was around Nazarenes, Assembly of God, Pentecostals — those are the kids that I went to school with. It was of no particular note. They would occasionally invite me to their church; I would go or I would not go, but it was not really an issue.

When I got to be all growed up, and I'm 45, 50 years old, I started discovering this animosity to all the people I grew up with. I thought this was just absurd. I had been with people when they were having their religious services. There was nothing threatening about it. I had never been dragged off to a church in handcuffs by people. So I thought this was very odd, because even though I'm not a churchgoer, I have great respect for people of faith who go, and I absolutely believe they have a right to exercise their faith. And what we struck we as odd was all this demonizing of people I knew did not deserve to be demonized.

Well, we're glad you're on our side.

Look, the religious tradition in this country is, mainly, tolerance. And what Christians are asking today, which seems to me to be entirely reasonable, is that the same sense of tolerance that is extended to the religions that make up only 7 percent of the population — that is, Islam, Wiccanism, Kwanzaa, Hinduism, Judaism — be extended to them, the people of the majority religion.

What's the problem with that?

TAKE ACTION/FOR MORE INFORMATION:
John Gibson says he gets hundreds of e-mails each day, ginned up by liberal blogs, criticizing "The War on Christmas." Please take a moment to counter that message by thanking him for writing the book. For contact information, including an easy-to-use e-mail form, visit the CitizenLink Action Center.

To learn more about "The War on Christmas" and John Gibson, visit his blog.

(NOTE: Referral to Web sites not produced by Focus on the Family is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)

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