From Holy Day to Holiday:
AN ONGOING CHRONICLE
by Pauly Fongemie, Web Master
 
It has been a steady, disturbing trend for quite some time now. It began as a subtle shift in the media-cultural landscape, a trickle of molten sulfur that bubbled up from the depths of that hellish place, hardly unnoticed by the many, including too many Catholics, until it is now a miasma of profanation, even blasphemy of sorts. Used to being roasted slowly by its ever-intensifying heat, the populace no longer seems to notice that their Christmas goose has been cooked. We are stewing in our own perfidy. And the American bishops, with the exception of one, utter nary a protest, as of the year 2006.

What? you may say. What are you talking about, what blasphemous stew, what profanation?

 To see how Christ's Holy Day [holiday comes from Holy Day] has been profaned and hijacked, let us take a little gander down memory lane, otherwise known in media land as "the Holiday Season."
First, let us put some perspective on our tour of "the Season."

It starts around the end of August, just in time for the Labor Day weekend. Commercials, programs with Labor Day tie-ins, specials, newscasts, newspaper ads, etc., all proclaim the coming holiday, but instead of saying "the Holiday" without any adjective, "Labor Day" is roundly proclaimed and hailed for all to bask in its patriotic glow. You know the holiday is Labor Day with absolute certainty. And proclaiming it as such is almost unnecessary because it is the only festival around that time, so the media is stating the obvious, you could say. And nothing is wrong here, in fact it is quite right! So why mention this? Ah, I am setting the stage for that perspective mentioned above.

Now it is autumn and as September becomes October, why wouldn't you just know it, another holiday is on the horizon. Only this time there is not one but a cluster. October features Columbus Day and that now biggest selling, biggest growing so-called holiday, Halloween, the pagan gala. However, instead of saying the "October Holiday Season," both Columbus Day and the Wiccan celebration are acclaimed separately. Of course, thanks to political correctness, the outright hatred of anything even remotely suggesting Christianity, and the deliberate falsifying of history, Columbus Day is headed for the dump heap of history. But for now it is still a convenient holiday enough to use for the elite's own purposes [camouflage to deflect from the intended all-out war being waged? or concentration on other weapons in the war against Christendom?]. So "they" let us "keep" Christopher Columbus a little longer, until it becomes "safe" to get rid of the future Saint's Day.

Oh no, you won't catch the cultural elites lumping Columbus and Halloween together as one big "Season," thanks be to God, but do not let them know, for this, too, could evaporate, on the other hand, probably not, for Halloween, you see, is just too important to have to share the spotlight. Yet, there is the reality of a cluster, a small one, but still a cluster, qualifying for a short "season." Ah, you say, I see what you mean by perspective, its shape is by now becoming quite visible.

And again in November another cluster: Veterans' Day and Thanksgiving, which some in the media tout as more popular than Christmas. Now you begin to hear much chatter about the upcoming holidays, the "Holiday Season." But as before, the two are scarcely intertwined but instead are placed on separate pedestals. And once more, no one is in any doubt about the holidays being promoted. Thanksgiving, a secular festival, is unambiguously proclaimed as Thanksgiving. Oh, occasionally a media talking head might say "holiday," but almost always, it is "Thanksgiving," as in "Thanksgiving holiday." I mean, what secularist or materialist could possibly object to being thankful? And they can count on us Catholics putting up our little pilgrim centerpieces to celebrate unwittingly the underlying anti-Catholicism of that long-ago sect's prejudice. If the Pilgrims had been anti-anyone else, do you honestly believe, even with all the commercial value of Thanksgiving, that we would still be celebrating it? Even if Thanksgiving had nothing to do with anti-Catholicism unlike the Pilgrims' ideas about Christmas and even though Thanksgiving as an official national holiday began with President Lincoln? If you do, contact me, I have some perfectly good land reclassified as "wetlands" by the ecocrats that I need to unload.

In 2002 A.D., the Moslem Ramadan was included in the above cluster, to bomb or not to bomb, etc.

In the year of our Lord, 2006, a September promotion for household decorative items featured a product for Halloween, a matching one for Thanksgiving, and a dissimilar one for some undefined "holiday." The matching set for the first two featured symbols that clearly said pagan ghouls and a Turkey feast. The third, was festooned with snowflakes. I do not know what holiday has snow as its main hallmark, unless it is that other pagan celebration, Winter Solstice, I suppose. But the promoter did not say what he meant, so he of course could have meant Christmas. Each year it is getting more difficult than the last to drum a plausible excuse for this snub of Jesus Christ, our King and Savior. The snowflakes would have been a sweet, soft addition, if there were at least the Star of Bethlehem, the Lion and Lamb, almost anything of a Scriptural reference but, of course, it was most definitely absent. In other words, every holiday but "Christ's Mass". The witches and ghosts must be given full accord, but the Holy Ghost, the powers that be forbid it! In early October, 2006, a fully religious Yom Kippur banner was broadcast for those Jews observing it, no "Blessed Holiday" citations, but "Yom Kippur", just so no one would be in doubt what was being respected.

Now it is the end of November and "the Season" has arrived. That is "the Holidays", or "the Holiday Season." This cluster is larger, but since the principle, on the surface, is clustering, size is immaterial. How do we know it is a cluster and how many holidays belong to it? Well the media elites tell us over and over: Hanukkah, the newly created Black holiday of Kawanza, the "Holiday," [still referred to as Christmas when an odd cultural elite type forgets and lets the holy word slip out] and New Years' Day. No one ever misses Hanukkah. Why even the Arts and Entertainment Network [AE] and the like have little greeting banners extending a Happy Hanukkah, complete with religious candles. While there are no such same for the Black holiday, that ought to be a reality within a few years, after all, it takes time to become established. Even a non-Tradition has to establish credentials in a fast-food fake-intimacy society. [The year 2005 saw the debut of the Kwanza banner.] And everyone says Happy New Year! But there is no Merry Christmas, merely a generic holiday greeting from the AE and its cohorts.  See Note Below.

The biggest holiday of them all, is barely and ever more rarely mentioned by its rightful, blessed name, Christmas. You hear "Winter Solstice" sometimes, but usually it is just called "the Holiday." Of course our elites are pig-headed enough to think we can;'t think at all, aware of what they are up to when the date, December 25 [Christmas throughout the world] is always referred to. Who is kidding whom here? All government schools have a non-Christmas Christmas, if you can believe it! You know, that pagan festival where we all put up a tree with lights and exhibit conspicuous consumerism. I mean, think about it: a national holiday, the name of which it is verboten to say! It would be almost funny if it were not so sad. So many non-Christian business moguls, many of them Jewish, counting on the Christmas Season for their bucks: The more we spend and see Christmas as a buying spree, the more Christ is dismissed and marginalized. I don't know that this was the original idea, but it hardly matters because Satan can use in a most special way those who do not realize they are working for him. Recall when everyone said "Merry Christmas," now it is more often than not "Happy Holiday."

Probably the most blatant example of a media elite choking on Christ's Holy Name is prolific on the Home and Garden network [HGTV], which has lots of "Holiday Specials." A few of the hosts mention Christmas, but they are in the minority. Repeatedly we hear, this and that for "the Holidays." You know they don't mean Hanukkah exactly, as Hanukkah is always mentioned with the religious aspects heavily promoted. Dreidels and Stars of David are everywhere. You will have to use a microscope to find a manger scene. Is the perspective clearer now?

You know they don't mean New Year's, or Kawanza either, for the same reason. So, by process of elimination, when they say "the Holiday," they must mean Christ's Birthday. Sometimes they say "the Holidays and intentionally cluster all the events, but listen closely. Christmas as Christmas, traditionally known, loved and celebrated is disappearing from the cultural milieu.

One host on HGTV had the arrogance to tell her viewers about the Advent calendar, a strictly Christian custom. She pooh-poohed the custom as no longer religious, saying, and I para-quote, "It used to have a religious significance, but that is no longer the case." Or words close enough to use the quotes. Imagine this, now! Of course, she failed to mention what that religious custom is, she was so busy in promoting a secular Advent calendar, an oxymoron.

Well, they are doing the same thing with Christ's Mass or Christmas, only the princes of Hell have to engineer the endeavor more carefully because after all, Advent is not a national holiday but Christmas is and there are just enough true Christians left in America to cause a little ruckus for now. So the installment plan is being used. Evil on the slow pay-as-you-go method is Satan's preferred modus operandi. It is so clever.

One of the hosts on this network [in 2003] started to say "Christmas" and caught herself just in the "Old Nick" of time, much like some pundits start to say "unborn baby" and they catch themselves and say "fetus." As I mentioned, some of the hosts still say Christmas, but they are not the majority. And even they use Christmas secularly almost always. Hell forbids that the Manger, the Birth of Christ and the customs surrounding this awesome Historical event ever be uttered or promoted by the elites among us. No, we have Hanukkah for that. And Kawanza for that, a newly created subset of Black culture which serves to overshadow Christ, except when adopted for use by a Black Christian family. The woman who was one of those instrumental in promoting the "tradition" of Kawanza did not speak of Christ in her explanation during an interview. The actual holiday was founded by a man, I believe.

No, don't look for too many mangers in Martha Stewart's hallowed halls where expensive sugarplums dance in her head and garlands for the sophisticate adorn the multi-millionaire diva's many staircases. No, the Holy Day of Christmas is just another holiday, a big one, but just another holiday and not a Holy Day, or at least if it is to these vanguards of secularism, it is a closely-guarded secret. And it can't be that they wish to keep religion out of their presentations because they all do a big Hanukkah show complete with the most important religious symbols, while seeming to downplay their own religion, if they have one as traditionally understood.
Now, there is nothing insidious about holly, reindeer, garlands of lights, and all the other secular decorations that belong as much to the season of winter in northern temperate zones and are also associated with Christmas, in of themselves. These cultural traditions are lovely. The objection is that they have come to symbolize the meaning of Christmas in our culture, thus excluding or marginalizing our Savior and the Stable in Bethlehem:

Shepherds have been overtaken by snowmen. The closest you will get to the manger [except for a two-second glimpse once or twice] is the ubiquitous Angel, usually "cutsied" to death almost as a parody of the real being. One host mentioned the religious significance of the Holiday, and then said "Angels." Not one hint about Christ. Without Christ there is no Christmas. Watch at your own peril and weep.

Post Script:
Whenever anyone says "Happy Holiday [or] Holidays" to me, I always reply, "Holiday? What holiday?" It is interesting to note how few are able to be more specific. Well, a generic holiday greeting is meaningless and impersonal, thus phony, just as phony as the "Peace" wishes, as in "Peace on earth and good will to men," which is an erroneous Biblical translation. The correct Scripture passage is "Peace on earth to men of good will." What a difference the interchange of a prepositional phrase makes. 


That was last year [paragraph written in 2003]. This year [2004, 2005] HGTV chimed in with the same insult to Christ. There was a week of "Happy Hanukkah" with religious symbol, the Menorah. A week later "Merry Christmas" was nowhere to be found, just the impersonal "Happy Holiday." In conjunction, a big corporation banned their employees from greeting one another, even between only Christians, with "Merry Christmas." Christ is not politically correct. The city of Las Vegas, Nevada permits the Hanukkah Menorah, but no Christmas religious symbols, only a tree, which is a cultural adjunct, but not the Christmas symbol as the Menorah is for Hanukkah.

Ironically, the big three networks, which are supposed to be so liberal [and they are, of course] did what appears to be their best to present Christian programming on Holy Eve. Meanwhile in cableland the religious programming consisted of the usual It's a Wonderful Life type films, which are fine, but two of the more "serious" networks ran "documentaries on Christ and Christianity. I could only monitor one of these for less than a half hour: it was all I wanted to view: The virginity of Mary was put into doubt by a "scholar," who intimated that the noun for "virgin" was the same as "young girl, or maiden" thus "we can't really be certain Our Lady was a Virgin"; and from another: the Angels of Christmas Night were reduced to an imaginative addition by St. Luke who adapted his Gospel account on "a couple of teenagers in the fields." Well, there's liberal, and then, there's liberal. So, who needs Fr. Richard McBrien and other assorted heretics and dissenters when calm, rational "non-denominational" scholars can plant doubts?

Since the original file was posted, December, 2001, the light of Christ in America has dimmed more and more. Now I hear people comment on the above phenomenon with the same comments as I have written here. In November of 2004 a Protestant said almost the same things to me, along with e-mail comments from Catholics, etc.

It is now 2005 and there is a glimmer of light in the winter darkness: a few evangelical Protestants are fighting back and the Roman Pontiff has called us back to the real meaning of Christmas [it has nothing to do with rushing around buying gifts and doodads]. But most Catholics [there are some very fine notable exceptions here and there], who are supposed to be Christian soldiers, are AWOL or missing in action or both ...

In 2005, FOX News---for once the good news is that the cable channel---did a commenable job by including beautiful stain glass Nativity scenes with Christmas in the text. The bad news is that it also had secular "Christmas" or I ought to say, "Seasonal" messages, which mar the awesome power, the unmatched reality of that long ago Holiest of Nights, further marginalizing Christ without intending to.

Some people of note are now writing books on the matter, two of which which were published in 2004 and 2005. One was for and the other against Christmas as Christmas. The title of the anti book includes "Hijack" but it refers to the pro-Christmas people doing the Hijacking, irony of ironies, if a lie passes for truth. Perhaps the author also hijacked my use of the word for the despoliation of the "Season" since I first used it on the web in 2001. Perhaps it was just a coincidence. But since I have written scathing comments about him in past columns, it is not unknown for such persons to be apprised and do some personal reading of their own, if you know what I mean.

Below are links to varius SOUND OFF columns relating to the war against Jesus Christ and the Holy Day celebrating His historic birth.


THE ANNUAL ACLU CHRISTMAS CAPER
THE BANISHMENT OF CHRIST
OBSERVING THE ABSURD
AND IN A HUMBLE MANGER





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www.catholictradition.org/Christmas/holiday.htm