An Anglican priest hands out brass knuckles to his congregation to
guard his church from anti-Christmas fanatics. Fascists insist that
the real Christmas is the Winter Solstice, while Communists stage
atheist musicals outside of churches on Christmas Eve. Activists
vandalize shops that set out holiday advertising in October and
anti-consumerists sing parody carols in shopping malls. Is there
such a thing as a War on Christmas? As Gerry Bowler demonstrates in
this entertaining book, there is and always has been a War, or
rather, several wars, on Christmas. Christmas, a global phenomenon
adored by billions and a backbone of international trade, is the
biggest single event on the planet. For Christians it is the
second-most sacred date on the calendar. But whether one celebrates
it or not, it engages billions of people who are caught up in its
commercialism, music, sentiment, travel, and frenetic busyness.
Since its controversial invention in the Roman Empire, Christmas
has struggled with paganism, popular culture, fierce Christian
opposition to its celebration, its abolition in Scotland and New
England, and its neglect and near-death experience in the 1700s,
only to be miraculously reinvented in the 1800s. The twentieth
century saw it opposed by Bolsheviks, twisted by Hitler, and
appropriated by every special interest group in the industrialized
world. Lately it has been caught up in the cultural struggles
between the left and the right in America, often misinterpreted as
a war on Christmas, when the fight is really over whether religion
in general will be allowed a public face. Gerry Bowler tells the
fascinating story of the tug-of-war over Christmas, replete with
cross-dressing priests, ranting Puritans, atheist witches, the
League of the Militant Godless, aesthetic terrorists in Quebec and
rap-singing Santa killers in Spain.
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