An excellent post from one of the better religion blogs out there, GetReligion, takes on Charles Krauthammer’s take on Christmas:
. . . Many of this year’s Christmas culture war skirmishes have nothing to do with tolerance and very little to do with the separation of church and state. They are simply cat fights between armies of liberal fundamentalists and conservative fundamentalists. [Krauthammer] chose to pick on the anti-Christmas left, but pick up almost any newspaper these days and there will be a story in it somewhere about the latest outbreaks on the right . . .
Then again, the cultural steamroller called “The Holidays” has done almost as much damage to the actual religious traditions of Hanukkah as it has to the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Once upon a time, Hanukkah was a smaller Jewish holiday reminding Jews not to compromise their faith when facing pressures to assimilate into a dominant culture. Today, Hanukkah is a giant, major holiday because it is close to the holiday previously known as Christmas. Religious history doesn’t get any more ironic than that.
Read the whole thing.
— Ross Douthat
The Dish 