Every yuletide season, Christian chestnuts and the wondrous Bill O’Reilly get up on their soapboxes and school non-Jesus-followers about the “true meaning” of the holiday while simultaneously grasping for evidence of the alleged war on Christmas.
Related: WATCH: Fox News Interviews Santa In Effort To End War On Christmas
Usually, we just go LOLOLOL, hahahaha, etc. Or ignore them altogether. Though the truth is, there is a war on Christmas. But it’s not just atheists, gays and Starbucks committing the worst offenses against taste and style. There are plenty of Evangelicals who are just as, if not more, guilty and we’ve got the proof. Pretty much we are all guilty.
Scroll down for evidence that the war on Christmas is not just a figment of Christ-followers’ warped imaginations…
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
The Ted Cruz Holiday Sweater
This limited edition holiday sweatshirt being peddled by Ted Cruz’s official presidential campaign is not only offensive to Christmas (screw-the-poor Cruz as Santa, really?), but it’s offensive to ugly holiday sweatshirts everywhere. And at $65 a pop, it’s a ripoff, too.
Kylie Christmas
The Australian dance diva’s latest effort somehow manages to combine all the worst elements of Christmas music and EDM into 40 auto-tuned minutes of bad holiday-themed dance floor anthems and over-the-top Christmas standards guaranteed to suck every last drop of cheer from your yuletide season.
Madonna‘s rendition of Santa Baby
While we’re on the subject of dance divas, in 1987, Madonna released a cover of the song Santa Baby, taking an already insufferable Christmas jingle and making it even more horrid. Thanks for nothing, Madge.
Good Tidings And Great Joy by Sarah Palin
In a nutshell, Sarah Palin spends 250 joyless pages ranting about atheists and other non-Christians, bashing all the godless Facebook trolls who are out to get her, and demanding respect from others while simultaneously disrespecting anyone who does not subscribe to her religious or political beliefs. And all in the name of Jesus f-ing Christ. Merry f-ing Christmas, a-holes!
Oprah‘s Favorite Things
Year after year, Oprah has led her legions of followers into a vast valley of credit card debt by giving them a laundry list of lavish holiday gifts to buy for themselves and their loved ones. Past items on Oprah’s “Favorite Things” list have included iPads, $100 yoga pants, cashmere sweaters, designer handbags, Burberry coats and a 7-day Royal Caribbean cruise. Oh, and don’t forget that subscription to O Magazine and that DVD of The Oprah Winfrey Show: 20th Anniversary Collection as stocking stuffers! #ka-ching!
Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas
This 2014 “faith-based Christmas comedy” features Kirk Cameron playing himself as he embarks on a quest to remind his brother-in-law about the biblical origins of Christmas. The film has the unique distinction of being the lowest-rated film on the Internet Movie Database’s bottom 100 list. It also has a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and won four Razzie Awards–Worst Picture, Worst Actor, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Screen Combo (for Cameron and his ego).
Cher‘s Holiday Shop
Each December, Cher launches her own personal war on Christmas (in an ironic way, of course). The “Cher Holiday Collection” available at Cher.com features an array of shamelessly tacky Christmas-themed t-shirts and sweatshirts, coffee mugs and ornaments all featuring the Believe hitmaker. The cumulative effect of the collection ends up feeling like a giant F.U. to the gods of X-Mas.
The AFA’s Online Christmas Store
Every yuletide season, the American Family Association takes a break from railing against LGBTQ people and instead turns its attention to scolding the general population for being shallow and materialistic and for failing to properly acknowledge the real reason for the season, Jesus H. Christ. So then why does the organization also have a special page devoted exclusively to Christmas gifts on its website? Two words: Trojan horse.
orjeffy
I’m not a Madonna fan, but I always liked her version of Santa Baby. It fit her persona at the time.
Kangol
Funny. The real “War on Christmas” meme has anti-Semitic origins, though, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.
paul dorian lord fredine
what’s wrong with ‘santa baby’? of course, the earth kitt original is far superior.
shle896
I actually love Madonna’s version of Santa Baby. In fact, it’s kind of a modern day classic at this point. I can’t imagine Christmas without listening to the original “A Very Special Christmas”. Leave it to Madonna to not go the traditional route. Love it or hate it, it’s a Christmas staple.
JamesG76
@shle896: I agree, I really like Madonna’s version of Santa Baby. It was cute at the time and it still is. I play it at least once or twice every Christmas and I’ve never heard anyone complain. The opposite in fact. It’s a fun little Christmas crowd-pleaser.
Maude
There are thousands, if not millions of Gay Christians, and as a matter of fact, I am one of them.
IMO, Catholicism, (but not all Catholic individuals) is the problem….And not Christianity as a whole.
As a gay man, I don’t much like being lumped in with those gays that are objectionable for their lack of good character, or worse….. And neither do
I like being lumped in with those Christians that suck up all the air in the room with their hatred of Gays.
Just sayin’.
Maude
And, by the way….Ertha Kitt Owns “Santa Baby”!just as strongly as Judy Garland Owns ‘Over The Rainbow’!
Andrew
I still enjoy Madonna’s Santa Baby and Kylie Christmas one has 1 dance floor song on it (100 Degrees), love the track, the rest of the album is standard Christmas themed but no religious songs.
I didn’t think I’d like the album as Xmas albums never interest me but this is one I could listen to throughout the year. Love ‘It’s the most Wonderful Time of the Year’
D P
I say f*ck christians and Xmas! If there truly were a god, then these f*ckers will burn/are burning in hell. And if any of those d*mn christians are reading this, pat robertson should realize that the tornados that struck yesterday which killed and destroyed people and property in Mississippi was a direct RESULT of people celebrating Xmas! And finally, any of you christians who read this and are offended by this, if you truly identify as christian, then forgive me for this offense, and accept me whole-heartedly and completely as a true christian is supposed to! Otherwise, you’d better start saying your prayers to the Flying Spagetti Monster, the true god and savior (not to mention, lunch!)!
Meanwhile, that cher.com site seems rather inviting. I’m going shopping!
philipcfromnyc
I have had extensive conversations with a Catholic friend who insists that all sex which occurs without the possibility of procreation is a sin, and a perversion of human exuality as ordained by God. In other words, masturbation, homosexuality, pedophilia, and contraception are all lumped into one grab bag of sins, because none of these acts can result in procreation.
Yet I have met other Catholics who genuinely believe that the “rhythm method” of procreation (in which the menstrual cycle of the woman is closely studied by both members of the (presumably married) couple) is perfectly acceptable in God’s eyes, notwithstanding the fact that, if properly adhered to, this method of contraception can be very reliable (not as reliable as using a condom, but nevertheless very reliable).
This, to me, represents blatant hypocrisy and a “salad bar” approach to contraception. As long as no artificial device is used, and as long as the male partner does not “pull out” immediately prior to ejaculation, the “rhythm method” is perfectly acceptable to these Catholics, and they become highly offended if questioned about the consistency of their ethics.
What this demonstrates to me is the extremely sex-negative nature of the Catholic church, with the result that all “sins” are lumped together as being equally evil in the eyes of God. Thus, a priest who enters into a sexual relationship with a married female congregant may find this offense no more questionable than that of a priest who sodomizes a crop of choir boys (or vice versa — the priest who preys upon choir boys may find his sins to be no more deserving of condemnation than that of the priest who enters into a mutually consensual sexual relationship with an adult married female congregant). If one form of sex is to be condemned because it cannot result in procreation, then all forms of sex which cannot result in condemnation are condemned on equal terms.
The tragedy of this invocation of the doctrine of moral equivalence is that it causes those who are the least capable of fighting back — specifically, prepubescent and barely pubescent choir boys — to be placed on the same level playing field as consenting adults acting in entirely chosen behavior.
The result is the implosion of faith both within and without the Catholic church, as members find it more and more difficult to accept the fact that pedophile priests are simply moved from parish to parish, where they can reenact their crimes (yes, CRIMES) with little fear of retribution.
PHILIP CHANDLER
KerryB
@Maude: Organized religion is the problem. It is about money and power, it has very little to do with faith.
philipcfromnyc
@Maude: The problem is that it is extremely difficult to determine which Christians are “good” Christians who genuinely live their faith and who take the attitude of live and let live, versus those “bad” so-called “Christians” who insist on shoving their interpretations of the Bible down the throats of the rest of us — or, one hundred times worse, who insist on running for public office by using their “faith” as a weapon with which to cudgel those who do not agree with them into submission. We have seen this in the dissents written by US Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas in response to the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015) (legalizing same sex marriage nationwide). Whilst claiming to base their arguments on law, several of these dissenting Justices really based their arguments on concepts such as “natural law” (with the implication of divine inspiration) and its role in the lives of Americans (or signed dissenting opinions which took this position).
Fortunately, the four dissenting Justices created such a shrill cacophony that, instead of silencing the opinion for the majority (authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy and signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg), they acted as a foil against which the majority opinion rested. The arguments made by the dissenting Justices were so wrong on the law (e.g., Justice Thomas argued, in the face of long-settled constitutional law, that “liberty” merely means freedom from physical restraint, or incarceration, notwithstanding the fact that the US Supreme Court voted, as far back as Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U.S. 578 (1897), that “[t]he ‘liberty’ mentioned in [the Fourteenth] amendment means not only the right of the citizen to be free from the mere physical restraint of his person, as by incarceration, but the term is deemed to embrace the right of the citizen to be free in the enjoyment of all his faculties, to be free to use them in all lawful ways, to live and work where he will, to earn his livelihood by any lawful calling, to pursue any livelihood or avocation, and for that purpose to enter into all contracts which may be proper, necessary, and essential to his carrying out to a successful conclusion the purposes above mentioned.” Associate Justice Rufus Peckham wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court.
Since then, subsequent US Supreme Court decisions have embraced this broad definition of liberty and its substance. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), Justice Kennedy wrote that “[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Subsequent decisions have upheld the holding that the meaning of the word “liberty” in the Due Process Clause is much more expansive than mere freedom from physical restraint.
Justice Scalia spent roughly nine pages engaged in an unusually snide, personal, and rancorous description of Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the majority, attacking Justice Kennedy’s writing style in unusually personal terms. He wrote about “startling assertion[s]” which were “buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion.” He further argued that the majority had engaged in “a naked judicial claim to legislative -— indeed, super-legislative —- power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.” He concluded with the remarkable statement that “[he] could go on. The world does not expect logic and precision in poetry or inspirational pop philosophy; it demands them in the law. The stuff contained in today’s opinion has to diminish this Court’s reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis.”
This is not the writing of a respectful dissenting Justice in our system of Article III judges and Justices.
Furthermore, there have been numerous outcries from conservatives about how marriage was “redefined” by a bare majority of “five unelected lawyers” (to quote the Louisiana Supreme Court). What assertions of this nature overlook is the reality that a remarkable and virtually unbroken line of roughly 40 US District Courts and state supreme courts, and four of the five US Courts of Appeals which had heard this issue, voted in favor of same sex marriage. Thus, roughly 55 Article III judges and Justices, as well as a handful of state supreme court justices, had voted in favor of same sex marriage. On the other hand, only two US District Courts, one of the US Courts of Appeals (the Sixth Circuit, in a sharply divided decision), and four Justices on the US Supreme Court had voted against same sex marriage. In other words, roughly 55 judges and Justices had voted in favor of same sex marriage, whereas roughly eight judges and Justices had voted against same sex marriage.
Placed in this context, arguments made by so-called “conservatives” are sharply at odds with reality.
PHILIP CHANDLER
D P
Well, reading the headlines I see Fox News reported just an hour ago that as many as 14 people died today as a result of these storms coming through the midwest, most of the states known to be in the bible belt. Must be that the closer we get to these fools worshiping a lie the more that die. Fear ye the wrath of the Flying Spagetti Monster!
jag4313
I had no idea that was Madonna!
Giancarlo85
@Maude: You’re delusional. There aren’t “millions” of gay christians. Most gay people I know, left organized religion years ago. Some may believe in god, but refuse to be part of such a corrupt backwards organization.
“As a gay man, I don’t much like being lumped in with those gays that are objectionable for their lack of good character, or worse”
Who are you to judge others?
From what I’ve seen of you on here, you aren’t such a fine figure of character either. Many Christians think you’re going to hell because you’re gay. MANY. Have a problem accepting reality?
Just SAYING!
D P
@D P: – Fifteen, now.
philipcfromnyc
It is precisely because Christianity asserts that I am going to go to hell, and precisely because this claim is made by “Christians” who adopt a “cafeteria style” version of Christianity, that I want nothing to do with this religion. For example, Leviticus 18:33 and 20:13 assert that “my blood is upon me” and that I should be put do death because I have committed an “abomination” in the eyes of God. Nevertheless, many of those Christians who cite these passages from Leviticus eat shrimp, wear shirts made of cotton and polyester blends, shave their sideburns, fail to stone their children to death when their children become rebellious (as all healthy children become, at some point in their development), have absolutely no feelings with respect to crop rotation (notwithstanding what Mosaic law has to say regarding this practice), work on Sundays, and sometimes take the name of their Lord in vain.
These people do not argue in good faith. They take a commonly-held societal disapproval and then search the Bible for passages which support the continuation of that particular form of societal disapproval. This is the ultimate form of circular logic, which carries with it the imprint of bigotry and group hatred dressed up in a thin veneer of religiosity.
PHILIP
Giancarlo85
@philipcfromnyc: Never mind the anti-gay verses were actually added by King James (a closeted homosexual himself)…
The bible is a plagarized grouping of text ripped off other ancient texts (like the Epic of Gilgamesh).
Giancarlo85
Check out this superbly written and backed article of why the bible is considered to be a mere rip off of other texts. If I wrote something like the bible for college, I would get expelled for plagiarizing other texts and giving absolutely no credit.
https://danielmiessler.com/essays/bible_fiction/
MoochO
@jag4313: I know! Now she looks like a pre-op, or CROSS-dresser. And “dumb blonde gold-digger” was OLD when she made this, too.
abnerb
I’m not a Christian (as known I’m not even religious), but Christmas is supposed to be celebrating Jesus Christ’s birth. People often think Christmas of being a day to be nice & goodwill to others, but being nice & goodwill to others is something 1 is to do everyday of the year. Is there a War on Christmas?
There’s a War on Christmas in that there are companies who forbid people from saying Merry Christmas. I have sometimes seen Christmas trees called Holiday trees. People sometimes avoid saying Merry Christmas but instead just say Happy Holidays because they think others will be offended by Merry Christmas. Most non-Christians don’t get offended by Merry Christmas, yet people get too politically safe with this. There’s nothing wrong with saying Happy Holidays, only that too often, this is said because companies make policies which forbid saying Merry Christmas.
Most Christians aren’t against store employees saying Happy Holidays-what they are against are stores forbidding workers from saying Merry Christmas.Main reason there has been controversy over Christmas is because of anti-Christian hostility. With Christmas, which is a Christian holiday, it’s my view people should not be offended by Merry Christmas. Yes, Christmas is celebrating Jesus Christ’s birth but there is no reason why atheists should be offended by Merry Christmas. Most Hindus, Muslims and other faiths do not get offended by Merry Christmas. Mostly Hindu India has Christmas decorations with the word Christmas though most Hindus do not give much thought to fact Christmas is about Jesus. Most Hindus in India aren’t being offended by Merry Christmas.
There are atheists who are not offended by Merry Christmas. Companies should not forbid employees from saying Merry Christmas-but if you aren’t going to allow Merry Christmas to be said, then don’t allow Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings. Just say hello, goodbye and thanks for shopping. Don’t put a Christmas tree up and insult it by calling it a Holiday tree. Just have no Christmas tree. There is no reason why atheists should be offended by Merry Christmas or calling it a Christmas tree, but if people are going to be offended by this, then just be neutral.