The war on Christmas has taken many forms, from substituting words in Christmas carols to banning expressions of the holiday, like nativity scenes and Christmas trees. National Review columnist Mark Steyn thinks this assault on Christmas is not only “nuts,” but that it demonstrates the Western world’s “institutional self-loathing.”
On Canada’s SUN television network last week, the author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon” cited the Royal Canadian Mint’s effort to replace the word “Christmas” with “holiday” in 2002 as an example of the anti-Christmas insanity.
“I don’t get offended at the word ‘Christmas,’” Steyn said.
“I’m entirely relaxed about it. I think it’s slightly odd that we recoil from the word. By the way, the worst example of this in recent years was by our pals at the Royal Canadian Mint, who about eight or nine years ago had that insane campaign, ‘On the first day of holiday, my true love gave to me,’ and you couldn’t say the ‘C-word.’ If you were going to buy a commemorative gift set from the Royal Canadian Mint, you would buy one of the ‘12 days of holiday.’ I thought that was nuts.”
Steyn went on to note that there is no crusade to generalize other religious holidays and that the West’s budding hatred of itself and its values was at the “heart” of the matter.
“There’s something very odd by the way, as I said about this stilted artificial avoidance of Christmas,” he said.
“We would have, you know, a day off on December 25 if it wasn’t Christmas. But somehow it has to be a generalized holiday. Nobody does this with Ramadan, for example. I notice when you look at the big Ramadan festivities at the White House that every president conducts now — nobody bothers to pretend that is a kind of general celebration. Nobody says ‘happy holiday’ instead of Ramadan. And I think there’s something sort of slightly — it’s not a small thing in that sense. It gets to the heart of the most disturbing feature of Western world at twilight, which is this kind of institutional self-loathing that’s at the heart of it.”
Watch:
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