United States

To hear Bill O'Reilly (a jerk) speak about how "Christmas is under attack," and "liberals are trying to take the Christ out of Christmas," you'd think that Christ had something to do with Christmas in the first place. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but the barest minimum of research will teach you that early Christian missionaries had a choice in dealing with popular solstice celebrations. They could either suppress them or put a veneer of Christianity on top of them and let the celebration continue. Wisely (for them) they chose the latter. The perception of Christmas today reflects that thin veneer. Merely scratch the surface however, and it becomes apparent that most Christmas traditions are decidedly un-Christian. This holiday is a holiday celebrated with gluttony and excess in all forms. To be honest, that's pretty much it, and that's what has persisted. Just look at the mall for proof.

Going back to O'Reilly's comment, I think it's true that a lot of people are trying to take "Christ out of Christmas," but I think that people who are actively trying to do such a thing think of it more as "getting Christ back out of Christmas." At the same time, I think the growing and rapidly accelerating departure of Christmas, at least in America from Christianity is less an intentional agenda and more a natural progression of a holiday, which has been exceptionally hard for the Church to Christianize, back to its roots. Shoddy religion symbolism irritates me, particularly that which relies on an english sun/son pun. The fact that a lot of Christmas parades and Christmas paegents have become "winter festivals" under the guise of sensitivity to other religions screams their pagan origins openly.

We Americans are northern hemispheric people, and we feel the same undefined desire to celebrate the corner of the year as those who came before us in the dark, cold winters. Maybe the departure of Christ from Christmas has been inevitable ever since they slapped him on it in the first place. The fact of the matter is that Christmas is a not-so-important Christian holiday. Easter is far more important and compelling. Maybe Christ never really had anything to offer for Christmas in the first place.

I will even admit that O'Reilly is partly right about Christmas being under attack. It is, but that's because all religious expression is under attack from a source I didn't even think of until it hit me over the head. Atheists have their own fundamentalists, and I think that they're equally as dangerous as the Christian, Muslim and Jewish fundamentalists we're accustomed to dealing with.

O'Reilly to Jewish caller: "[I]f you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel"
Source: Media Matters

Check out the link to media matters and read the exchange. Bill O'Reilly and Randi Rhodes have a lot in common, and it's the fact that they'll talk over people without listening to them. No matter what the caller is saying, they'll jump in and proceed to knock down straw men left and right.

It sells. It's entertaining when you agree with them, but infuriating when you don't. The caller has a legitimate point, that christmas is too much in schools now, but that isn't addressed. Instead the culmination of the discussion is: "if you don't like it, then leave."

It's like a special variation on Godwin's Law, and from now on any person who uses "if you don't like it, then find another country" in an argument shall be considered to have lost the argument.

The idea of abstinence-only education reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the Springfield cat-burglar leads the town on a false treasure hunt, using the diversion to escape prison. At the end of the episode, several characters have dug themselves into a hole looking for a buried treasure that's not there. Otto says, "how are we going to get out of here?" and Homer says "We'll dig our way out!"

Millions of dollars are thrown at abstinence-only education, and then it's proven, again and again and again, even when we already knew, that it doesn't work, and the response is to throw still more money into abstinence-only education.

"We'll dig our way out!"

Contraception and STI prevention are important things to learn, and I'll never understand the culture of people who deliberately misinform and ignore these issues. Abstinence-only education leads to teen pregnancy, and it leads to sexually transmitted infections. Supporting abstinence-only education means supporting unwanted pregnancies and STIs. How did that get to be so popular?

My parents didn't give me a lot of instruction in this area. Basically, they handed me a book and said, "RTFM." It's a good thing I was able to get everything I needed in school. Believe me, I was relieved, because having that conversation with my parents would have been mortifying.

I learned some important things. Sex can be a deadly weapon. I know because I've known people who died of AIDS. It can screw up your life. I've known people who dropped out of school, never to return because they got pregnant at 14. And I know why I've never had to deal with either of those, and it's because I know to get tested periodically. I know every kind of contraception and STI prevention method under the sun and I think I could proficiently use any one of them. I know that I should ask about a person's history, and I learned how to do it sensitively. But none of that knowledge has ever made any difference in when, where, how or why (although definitely 'with whom') to have sex.

I've never been a subscriber to the 'waiting' ideology (refer to The Onion article titled "Horribly Awkward First Sexual Encounter 'Worth The Wait' For Newlyweds"). Personally I think it blows the whole thing way out of proportion, and who needs that? But even those who think it is important can benefit from those tools. Why does the right-wing political climate support all kinds of weapons, except those that work?

Ever notice that people who begin a sentence with "I'm all for freedom of speech..." seldom are for freedom of speech? They're just using the phrase as a shield. It's like saying 'I can't be a hateful bigot, I have some gay friends.' As an experiment, I did a Google search for "i'm all for freedom of speech but." My search turned up 729 hits including the following:

I'm all for freedom of speech, but...

...this is the wrong time to be having those antiwar demonstrations, with the troops over there.

...I don't want to pay for it.

"The aircraft at this site is an F-101B "Voodoo" Interceptor of the 75th Fighter Interceptor Squandron at Dow AFB, Bangor [ME].
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, April 11, 1961, Capt. Vernal Johnson and Lt. Edward Masaitis were returning from an active air defense intercept off the coast in a freezing rain storm with zero visibility. The aircraft got too low on approach and struck this mountain."
Let it remain as a memorial to these two officers and all those who gave their lives in the service of their country in the Cold War era.

Apparently, aircraft hulks such as this one aren't even that rare around active Cold War air bases. It was the beginning of the jet era and the limits of men and machines were in the early stages of discovery.