While we're at it.(The Public Square: A Continuing Survey of Religion, Culture, and Public Life)

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, February, 2006 by Neuhaus, Richard John

* The Christmas wars have come and gone. Until next December--or, more accurately, the start-up of the shopping season in late October. The wars received more attention than usual this time, with numerous localities dubbing Christmas trees as "holiday" trees or "winter" trees, which elicited widespread demands that Christmas be called Christmas. In response, major retailers reverted to "Merry Christmas" in advertising and greetings by sales personnel. Cultural critics reached to discover ironies in all this (irony being the paydirt of cultural criticism). For instance, Adam Cohen, writing in the New York Times, is excited by the discovery that the Puritans of Massachusetts despised Christmas as an unbiblical papist innovation. When, later, merchants discovered that...

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