That anyone could even be discussing this as something to do with religion, as they are doing at such places as Religion Dispatches, shows how degraded the discussion has become. This is a promo by some of the worst TV and radio companies to get their cult member like audience worked up and pointed in the right direction over a rote holiday promo by a coffee chain. That would be "right" as in right-wing. It has nothing to do with Christianity, at all, that is if Christianity is has anything more substantial in it than the coffee cup figures of the snowflake and reindeer that the defenders of "Christmas" are supposedly all worked up over.
If there is any part of the population worked up over Starbucks' coffee cup design, and I'm not convinced those folks are much more real than the any other part of this nonsense, then their Christianity is as ephemeral and meaningless and so, far more a sacrilege than the minimalist December holiday coffee cups.
And the opposite is as true, the annual phony umbridge of the atheists, secularists, wall-of-separationists, pagans, etc. over the fact that the majority of Americans, Canadians, etc. are Christians and that the culture which they comprise the largest percentage of takes some notice of Christian holidays, all that is, as well, a phony attempt at ginning up stuff and, in many cases, to get attention and money for "secularist" organizations. It has nothing, at all, to do with protecting civil liberties and freedom. As I'll never stop mentioning, the high mark in that effort happened in the first half of the 1960s as different branches of government put up overtly Christian displays of overt Christian Christmas all over the place. Yet, somehow, civil liberties survived and even thrived.
As an aside, if there is anything that has led to a decline in Jewish religion in America, it's secularization that has done that, not Christianity. I doubt there has been a time in the history of the country when more Christians value Judaism as a living, ongoing and entirely legitimate community apart from Christianity than today. The ridicule of it as heard from most people seems to me to come from secular and atheist sources who also promote the urban myth that anti-semitism is a manifestation intrinsic to Christianity.
In so far as there is anything important in this it is as a measure of the degrading of the collective American mind, the trivialization of our thinking, the superficiality of both our religious (and non-religious) thought and political lives. As real problems for both religion and our government are screaming for attention, you'll probably find that such trivial matters get huge amounts of attention. Of course, a lot of that is because it's easier and more fun to get whipped into a lather over this stuff than it is to face anything serious, something that points out what a failure both the media is as a source of information and a catalyst for serious and important thought. I would say it's an indication of the failure of our educational system but they've been as shoved aside as genuine religion by that same media which is the predominant cultural force in our lives. About the most attention that education in my state has gotten this season is over a nervous nellie of a superintendent ordering a teacher to take down a pink Hello Kitty Christmas tree from her classroom. Oh, hell, the thing is so funny I'm going to post the picture.
In a way it's fitting that it should be an ephemeral corporate promotion that is the object of such pseudo-religiosity and the focus of our pseudo-news. PR and the entertainment it is pushed through is the real state religion of corporate America and it is as ubiquitous as it is phony. The two sides of this, the pseudo-Christians of FOX and the other cabloid-hate-talk-radio side and the would-be valient secularists are really just two factions in the materialist reformation where this modern thirty (and counting)-year-war is being waged. None of this is of any consequence except as a means of getting hold of the organs of government and the courts, and, sorry, secularists, that has worked a lot better for the FOX side than it has for you guys, you are getting roped in and sucker punched on this and your latest lead balloon of turning the country atheist isn't working very fast. As I've pointed out, even the Pew survey folks, who have promoted the alleged de-religionizing of American admit that most kids raised as atheists don't stay atheists.
The real opponents of the FOX, etc. side of this will not be materialists, either of the vulgar or the intellectual type, they will be those who take the real opposition to that seriously, mostly Christian, some of them Jews and Muslims, some belonging to other religions. I am just about certain they will not be found among the Unitarian etc. deists but that's a long series of posts, in itself. They certainly won't be found among the fans of Seinfeld and other sit-com impiety, they won't be found on TV, though perhaps Colbert might slip in a few snippets of subversion on the topic. He's a Catholic, you know. I read somewhere he teaches Sunday school.
As to those stupid Seinfeld festivus poles, I'm trying to be more civil in honor of Christmas so I won't tell you where to stick those. Seinfeld was never funny, it was just stupid. You suckers will buy anything they put up on TV. Just like those FOX folk you love to look down on.
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