FROM THE ARCHIVES: HOOK, LINE, AND SANTA:

Liberals' efforts to purge 'Christmas' have backfired (MARK STEYN, December 26, 2004, Chicago SUN-TIMES)

A few Decembers back, I was in Santa Claus, Ind., and went to the post office -- a popular destination thanks to its seasonal postmark.

''Merry Christmas!'' I said provocatively.

But Postmistress Sandy Colyon was ready for me. ''A week ago,'' she said, ''I'd have had to say 'Happy Holidays,' but we've been given a special dispensation from the postmaster-general allowing us to say 'Merry Christmas.' So Merry Christmas!''

That's ''Christmas'' at the dawn of the third millennium -- a word you have to get a special memo from the head office authorizing the use thereof. There was more hoo-ha than usual this ''holiday season'' about the war to expunge the C-word from American vocabularies, and, now that we can stick the bland nullity of ''Happy Holidays!'' away in the closet until the start of Ramadan 2005, it's worth considering who are the real winners and losers in this struggle. [...]

Flipping the dial on my car radio, I noticed more stations than ever were playing nonstop 24-hour ''holiday music'' for the month before C-day -- not just ''Winter Wonderland'' and ''Jingle Bell Rock,'' but Bing and Frank doing ''Go Tell It On The Mountain'' and Andy Williams singing ''O Holy Night.'' And not just the old guys, but all the current fellows, especially the country singers: Garth Brooks' new album -- "The Magic Of Christmas" -- includes ''Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!'' but also ''Baby Jesus Is Born'' and ''O Little Town Of Bethlehem.''

The seasonally litigious rest their fanatical devotion to the de-Christification of Christmas on the separation of church and state. America's founders were certainly opposed to the ''establishment'' of religion, whose meaning is clear enough to any Englishman: The new republic did not want President George Washington serving simultaneously as supreme governor of the Church of America, as the queen today is simultaneously head of the Church of England, or the bishop of Virginia sitting in the U.S. Senate, as today the archbishop of York sits in the House of Lords. Two centuries on, these possibilities are so remote to Americans that the ''separation'' of church and state has dwindled down to threats of legal action over red and green party napkins.

But every time some sensitive flower pulls off a legal victory over the school board, who really wins? For the answer to that, look no further than last month's election results. Forty years of ACLU efforts to eliminate God from the public square have led to a resurgent, evangelical and politicized Christianity in America. By ''politicized,'' I don't mean that anyone who feels his kid should be allowed to sing ''Silent Night'' if he wants to is perforce a Republican, but only that year in, year out, it becomes harder for such folks to support a secular Democratic Party closely allied with the anti-Christmas militants. American liberals need to rethink their priorities: What's more important? Winning a victory over the New Jersey kindergarten teacher's holiday concert, or winning back Congress and the White House?

In Britain and Europe, by contrast, the formal and informal symbols of religious faith remained in place in national life and there were no local equivalent to America's militant litigants, and the result is the total collapse of Christianity: Across the continent, the churches are empty.

It goes without saying that the Founders were geniuses, but were even they smart enough to just include the Establishment Clause as a trap to entagle the godless?

(Originally posted: 12/26/04)

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 24, 2007 3:29 PM