Wednesday Wingnut Watch
Christmas Hatred Edition
After-Action Report from the Front Lines of 2009’s War On Christmas
The War on Christmas continues. We will not give up until everybody stops this “holiday” nonsense and starts saying “Merry Christmas” in their greetings. Uh, Mr. Steele, may we have a quick word with you? Oops, the Republican National Committee finds itself among the Haters of Christmas by omitting mention of Christmas and instead saying ”this blessed time” on their greeting card.
The next time you hear someone say “Happy Holidays,” remember that what they’re actually saying is “Happy Holidays, Comrade.” They’re playing right into the secularist agenda that seeks to replace the God of the universe with the god of government.
Typically we introduce items here with a tongue-in-cheek pseudo wingnut statement… but the previous line is an actual quote from a column, The War on Christmas: It’s a Commie Thing by wingnutter Matt Barber. As an example of over-the-top communist secularization of Christmas in America, he gives this example:
… in 2005, religious bigots at Ridgway Elementary School in Dodgeville Wisconsin - ostensibly spurred-on by the ACLU’s anti-Christian disinformation campaign - followed Communist Vietnam’s lead, secularizing “Silent Night” for the school’s “winter program.”
They renamed the beloved carol “Cold in the Night” and changed the words to remove any reference to Mary or Jesus. The newly secularized version now began: “Cold in the night, no one in sight, winter winds whirl and bite, how I wish I were happy and warm, safe with my family out of the storm.” (Must’ve been hard to keep down your egg nog.)
If true, it might be troubling. However, as you’ll see in this contemporaneous news account, what actually happened was perhaps ill-conceived, but not a plot by Commies to subvert Christmas:
Dodgeville School District officials say traditional, unaltered carols will also be sung, and that “Cold in the Night” is part of a decades-old Christmas play that students have performed in years past, and is not an attack on the religious nature of the holiday.
“There’s been a tremendous misunderstanding here,” said District Administrator Diane Messer. “Somebody locally, I believe, misunderstood — even after our discussion with them — that one of our teachers took the liberty of changing the lyrics.”
Students at the school will present “The Little Tree’s Christmas Gift,” a musical production that tells the story of a family going out to buy a Christmas tree. Other melodies include “Jingle Bells,” “We Three Kings,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Chanukah.” “Each one has the lyrics changed in order to tell the story,” Messer said. “It’s so that young children know the melodies.”
“You can go to children’s programs in any season and you will find adaptations of music with new lyrics to tell a story, and you can go to any music store and find music that has been adapted,” she added. “Those things occur.”
If anybody’s gonna be re-writing the lyrics to Christmas songs, it’ll be us. Treat yourself to this holiday, er, um, Christmas video greeting from Tony Perkins and his religious right gang at Family Research Council.
Jeepers, why so sensitive… we regret if you were offended, Mr. Feliciano. Yet another re-written Christmas song. An update on this wingnut item from two weeks ago. The radio hosts who converted Christmas favorite “Feliz Navidad” into “Illegals in my Yard” appear to get it now… or at the very least they understand the hazards of infringing on somebody else’s copyright. The parody was removed from the Human Events website.
Grammy-winner Jose Feliciano has gotten an apology after accusing a pair of radio producers of trashing the spirit of Christmas by using his popular holiday song, “Feliz Navidad,” for a racist musical spoof about undocumented immigrants.
Feliciano released a statement Wednesday saying that he was “revolted beyond words” and that the song was never meant to be “a vehicle for a political platform of racism and hate.” “When I wrote and composed ‘Feliz Navidad,’ I chose to sing in both English and Spanish in order to create a bridge between two wonderful cultures during the time of year in which we hope for goodwill toward all,” the Puerto Rico-born singer said.
The parody, titled “The Illegal Alien Christmas Song,” was created by radio producers and writers Matt Fox and A.J. Rice and was posted in mid-December on the Web site for Human Events, a Washington-based conservative weekly publication founded in 1944.
Web site editor Jed Babbin apologized Wednesday and said the song would be removed from the site. The link to the song’s page was no longer available by Thursday. “We regret any offense that Mr. Feliciano may have taken from this parody,” Babbin said in an e-mail sent to The Associated Press.
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