Coals (of fire) in the ACLU's stocking

Kevin McCullough, New York radio talk show host, blogger, and columnist, has come up with a positive way to protest the push to turn Christmas into Generic Winter Holiday.

I'm joining Kevin and a number of other bloggers around the country to urge you to send a Merry Christmas card to the ACLU national office in New York City. Not "Season's Greetings," not "Happy Holidays," not "Harry Eidiwalihanukwanzamas," but "Merry Christmas." ("Happy Christmas" is acceptable if you're an Anglophile.) And make it as specifically Christmassy as you can. You might even write a note explaining what Christmas means to you.

Here's the address:

Kevin reminds us to be respectful: "[P]lease be kind, even cheerful in sending the card. Trust me - kindness will produce more smoke out of their ears than anything untoward you could think of anyway..."

Some of you may object that the ACLU doesn't deserve all the credit or blame for the increasing secularization of Christmas, and that's fair enough. And although I'm sure the ACLU would not interfere with our ability to observe Christmas in our homes or churches, they have damaged the ability for a community to come together and acknowledge Christmas. And ACLU litigation has created a "chilling effect" that has led to overreactions by public schools (like banning the school choir from singing Handel's Messiah) and private companies who genericize the holiday season in their advertising.

I think the chilling effect is not just fear of being sued, but the ACLU's efforts give the impression that more people are offended by explicit references to Christmas than really are. The message is starting to get through to retailers that avoiding "Merry Christmas" offends more people than are offended by using it.

As Greta (Hooah Wife), who is Jewish and lives in the Tulsa area, wrote, "Merry Christmas is a holiday greeting to me - it does not and should not offend me. If it does, then I need to re-examine my own values."

I'll update here periodically, but read Kevin's blog for the latest on the effort.