The Right To Celebrate The Holiday Of Your Choice
My right to wish someone a Merry Christmas, and to keep Christ in the word, is every bit as real as your right to drop it. Say "Happy Holidays" if that suits you. Call it the Xmas season. Both are allowed.
Free speech runs in both directions. It was never set up to shield a single approved kind of belief. The protection was meant for every American, the politically correct ones and everyone else alike. Somewhere along the way that seems to have slipped our minds.
When I look at how the American Civil Liberties Union picks its battles, I see a pattern. They defend one group's liberty while trimming back the liberty of some other group that happens to hold the opposite view. That is not neutral protection of speech.
At times the ACLU reads less like a defender of rights and more like an enforcement arm for whatever is fashionable to say. People worry about ending up in court, so they stay quiet on things that ought to be spoken out loud.
Turn the season into a war on Christmas and the joy drains right out of it. I've noticed stores holding back on decorations the way they used to put them up, and I feel the absence. Odd, since those same stores still very much want shoppers buying gifts and ornaments, whether the buyer is religious or not.
There's real nervousness now about celebrating the plain old-fashioned way. This holiday has been a tradition in this country for a long time. Meanwhile people seem to twist themselves into knots accommodating the religious observances of other faiths.
Prisons are one place you can see it. A growing number of Muslim converts behind bars have pushed institutions to change meal plans, even for inmates who aren't Muslim. I couldn't tell you whether those same facilities stock Kosher food and keep separate kitchens for Orthodox Jews. Seventh Day Adventists carry dietary rules of their own that come from what they believe.
And now there are jokes I'm not allowed to tell. We're expected to never poke fun at anyone who differs from us, even when that person might crack up right along with us if they overheard the line. I laugh at myself plenty. I joke about being disabled, about being a "Red Neck," about being flat-out dumb now and then.
Then there are all those goofy Christmas songs. I half wonder if the ACLU will decide those need to go next.