I found two editorials published today in the Asheville Citizen-Times to be deeply offensive. One by Bruce Steinbicker and another by Jean Franklin.According to these two guest editorials, the vigorous defense of a Christian Christmas can be described either as "pitching a hissy fit" or a "sideshow" or a "tempest in an eggnog cup."
I'd like to see these writers apply their arguments to all those people who claim to be offended by Christian religious symbols during this season. Are they pitching a hissy fit? And can we apply this same argument to those who are offended by racial epithets. Are they engaging in a sideshow or stirring up a tempest in a teapot? The simple fact is that some things are worth defending. And the preservation of the distinctly Christian character of this seasonal holiday is one of them.
Also, in her editorial, Jean Franklin arrogantly digresses into a lecture on the etymology of the words Christmas and holiday which I found condescending and irrelevant. This is commonly known as a "red-herring" argument. It’s a way of introducing a divergent topic in order to change the subject. And change the subject she did by then quoting a Leftist, anti-Walmart propaganda film as her source of information for the purpose of reiterating tired anti-capitalist clichés.
Bruce Steinbicker, in his editorial, refers three times to "right-wingers" and disingenuously asks that they explain themselves in all of this. I had not considered that the defense of Christmas was the exclusive charge of the Right. Now I know.
Steinbicker concludes his snarling editorial by suggesting that we Christians should emulate an even better holiday than Christmas: Kwanzaa. That’s the phony holiday cooked up by a Black militant in Los Angeles in the 60’s specifically designed to compete with Christmas and divide people along racial lines.
The central subject, which Mr. Steinbicker and Ms. Franklin work so hard to obscure, is the intentional and aggressive de-Christification of a specifically Christian holiday by a cultural elite that is emboldened by the passivity of the complacent faithful. Now that that passivity has been shaken off and a campaign to preserve a valued cultural heritage has been successfully mounted, they want to cry foul and lash out with sanctimonious sarcasm and juvenile, hate-filled rhetoric to denigrate all those who would dare to speak up in the face of their transparent assaults.
It sounds like somebody's having a hissy fit and needs a "time out."
