The title of Sarah Palin’s new book about the nonexistent war on Christmas, Good Tidings and Great Joy,?is derived from her misreading of what the Bible says the angel said to the Virgin Mary, ?I bring you good tidings of great joy.? At Liberty University, Palin told the audience that the angel told Mary, ?I bring you good tidings and great joy.? It’s a small detail, but one they got right in A Charlie Brown Christmas for Pete’s sake! Things go rapidly downhill from there. And not in a good, sleigh ride kind of way.
Surprisingly, Palin did know that Christmas was not declared a national holiday in America until 1870. From that factoid, she drew the conclusion opposite of what that suggests: The Founding Fathers were all about Christmas, the heart of Liberty and America!
In fact, the Puritans killed Christmas, first in England, then in America. The imaginary ?angry atheists? that haunt Palin’s visions of sugarplums have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with killing Christmas, now or in the past. Nobody is taking legal steps to remove Nativity scenes from their neighbors? lawns, as Palin avers. Basically everybody likes colored lights and presents, and nobody cares how another person celebrates whatever holiday they choose to celebrate in December.
It was a humorless, no-fun religious right that first took both the Christ and the mass right out of Christmas. In Oliver Cromwell’s England, in 1647, the Puritans in Parliament outlawed both Christmas and Easter. The Puritans were against the sin and celebrating and general excess that took place over the twelve days of Christmas. There was nothing in the Bible to suggest that December 25 was actually Christ’s birthday. And anything with the word ?mass? in it was just too Catholic. When Christmas was outlawed, only outlaws celebrated Christmas; until that decision was reversed on or about 1660.
The Puritans who rejected Christmas in England were also against it when they landed in America. Calling it ?Foolstide,? it was outlawed in part of New England. Some continued to insist that Santa Claus was the Anti-Christ for the next two centuries. Christmas was not really important in America until after the American Civil War. What we know as Christmas today is a hodgepodge of traditions borrowed from England and other countries, as well as those created right here in America by liberal Christians in the American South.
Palin tried hard to tie Christmas to two of our Founding Fathers: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wrote to Adams in 1823:
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
Adams apparently was not offended to be on the receiving end of such a letter, as Adams said:
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.
Adams understood the Bible to be a heavily edited book. Jefferson undertook to rewrite this dreary tome. Famously, in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, President Adams conceded that ?the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion . . .
This document was ratified by an American Congress. Revered Republican President Abraham Lincoln said:
The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion.
Palin could probably have looked at Wikipedia and learned that Christmas was banned or not observed by fundamentalist Christians for over 200 years. But as Jerry Falwell, Jr., wisely noted during Palin’s appearance, success in Christian America is not dependent on ?how smart you are.? The Puritans were hardly trying to ?secularize our nation.? The Puritans were just against Christmas, unlike Atheists or any other non-Christian, who could not care less about this topic, other than being weary of yet another foolish Republican fiction being nattered about endlessly. The only revisionists here are Sarah Palin and the current Christian right.
This is what happens when a gum-smacking book banner from Wasilla attempts to write a book.
Edited/Published by: SB
