It’s official: Trump voters are Wile E. Coyote. Like that clueless would-be-roadrunner-murderer, they’ve run our country off a cliff. They just don’t realize it yet.
Evidence of their inability to grasp what exactly they’ve gotten us all into comes in the form of a new poll from the creative folks at Public Policy Polling (PPP). According to a poll of 1200 registered voters conducted earlier this month,
60% of Trump voters … think there’s a War on Christmas to 25% who say there isn’t … In fact 24% of Trump voters say that the War on Christmas concerns them more than a potential war with China would.
Yep, they’re more worked up about people saying “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas” than they are by Trump’s reckless escalation of tensions with China, a country with a population of 1.36 billion and, you know, nuclear weapons.
As that that same poll reveals
Trump voters say by a 69-4 margin that they prefer the phrase Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays.
And while we’re on the subject of Christmas, Trump voters also have strong opinions about the color of Santa’s skin.
A majority of Republicans may not believe in Santa but if he does exist they know one thing about him- he’s white. GOP voters nationally by a 54-6 margin say that Santa is white … .
Most Clinton voters, by contrast, don’t actually give a shit what race Santa is. Because seriously.
Meanwhile, a poll by Qualtrics reveals that most Republicans — 52 percent — think that Trump won the popular vote. Seven percent of Democrats think this as well.
Needless to say, Trump did not win the popular vote, Santa is a fictional character who can be whatever color we want, and China really truly seriously is a bigger threat to America than people saying “happy holidays.”
While Trump voters freak out about imaginary dangers like the “war on Christmas,” we all need to worry about their ongoing war on reality.
Tara – ???.
@Tara
Your friend is a good’un. Tell him he’s all right by this Pagan.
@Tara: That’s a beautiful thought.
@Tara: That’s a lovely sentiment, one that I share as a Pagan.
In my studies of what to do for a more “traditional” Yuletide, I did come across “charity” quite a few times.
I unfortunately can’t do it this year (money and health issues), but I’m hoping to do it next year (if Mango Mussolini doesn’t sell us all to Putin first).
For this year though, I’m hoping to make a cheap beef stew and some Wassail. I also don’t have a fireplace, so I’m going to burn a fireplace-scented candle instead.
To numerobis: ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
No El.
If you want a real War Against Christmas, look at how picklepuss Protestants have reacted to it (Catholics have generally been cool with it, in fact, one reason for hating Christmas was it was too “Papist.”) The Puritans and Presbyterians were the worst offenders. Christmas did not become a Federal holiday until 1885, and Oklahoma was the last state to make it a holiday in 1907. Congress met on December 25, 1789, the first Christmas under the Constitution.
Go away, Mark.
I don’t have to deal with the ”war” on Christmas at least. Back home nobody really cares if you say ”Merry Christmas” or ”Happy Holidays” and I generally have no problem saying either of the two.
But I get the frustration, for me it’s the dreaded Easter holidays. Everyone tells you ”Christ has risen” and you have to respond ”Indeed he has”. I’ve been saying ”Happy Easter” for years now and every freaking year it’s the same corrections and conversations with people who know my opinion. I don’t know why it’s so hard for people to appreciate that while you don’t share their beliefs, you respect them enough to wish them a happy holiday, while at the same time holding true to your beliefs. Mutual respect and all that. Guessing the Drumpf crowd sees mutual respect like this: I don’t respect you, but you still have to respect me.
Happy holidays, everyone!
@Paradoxy , ”’Mango Mussolini ” is now my favorite description of the orange one 😀 You made my day.
Do they know the Russians don’t even celebrate Christmas on December 25th!1!11!eleventy!!!!????
I just say ‘Thank you’ to whatever anyone wishes me, and if they make a big stink about it, *they* look like the rude asshole they truly are. I’m not Christian, and I grew up in Jehovah’s Witness household, so Christmas means less than nothing to me. Other than New Years, I don’t care about the reason for the season, but I DO care about not getting nuked, which means I’m definitely part of the problem.
I’m gonna laugh when tangerine nightmare starts rubbing his grubby little mitts all over their SSI and medicare. Cry laugh, at least.
Bina and all our other commentors from Germany: my thoughts are with you and I hope that everyone you know and care about is safe.
I hope that this doesn’t become further ammunition for your nation’s assholes.
This alternately makes me laugh or just shake my head in dismay.
You know what the REAL war on Christmas is? People who militantly and not very merrily say “Merry Christmas”. People who take offense at someone trying to wish them light in the dark winter months! That fucking offends me.
My fave holiday greeting is indeed “Merry Christmas” but say it merrily or don’t say it all.
Happy Christmas, I found jarring when I first moved to the UK, but it’s perfectly good, too.
Happy Holidays! Yes, there are many holidays this time of year. Let’s be happy for all of them. Celebrate good times, c’mon!
Season’s Greetings – I think is bland and blah 😉 which greetings? What season? But if said cheerily enough – fine and dandy.
Yesterday I did a corporate tweet and our comms lead told me to say “Seasons Greetings or Happy Holidays” – I rolled my eyes and went with “Happy Christmas” and that was the first time over all these many years that someone has asked me to do or even mentioned an alternative greeting in all these long, dreary years of the war on Christmas. (She is American, too.)
And guess what – I got told off – but only for the fact that I shared a very grumpy picture of a colleague with the tweet and the rest of the team was blurry. Fair enough, really. In my defense, I wanted to get back to the Christmas lunch wine so didn’t want to retake the pic.
I’m partial to “Merry/happy presents,” myself.
Because presents.
Paul Krugman has an interesting piece on Republican politics. Both modern and ancient.
Eisenhower’s holiday card from the White House, 1955, said Season’s Greetings. Between that and his comments about the military-industrial complex, I assume that modern Republicans would have determined he was born in Kenya, rather than Texas.
I have to say, out of all of this, the passionate defense of Santa’s whiteness fascinates me the most. Historically, Nicholas of Myra was an ethnic Greek, IIRC, but that covered a lot of possible ‘racial’ ground in the ancient world, and also has very little to do with the modern folk figure of Santa Claus.
The best explanation of Santa I’ve ever seen comes from a Barbara Kingsolver novel in which a Pueblo character tries to explain the concept of the kachinas to his white girlfriend. She’s puzzled as to how one of them can be ‘from the East’. He points out that Santa Claus has a known, symbolic, address, a wife and elves and reindeer, a customary costume and colors, that people make dolls and pictures of him to use at certain times of the year, and that at that time, one person will also often dress as him and perform certain actions, while others treat him as ‘Santa’ and behave a certain way.
She says something to the effect that ‘that’s just because he represents the spirit of Christmas’, and he says, ‘exactly’.
Now, this figure did not leap into the spirit world full-blown. There’s a core of stories about Nicholas the Wonderworker, some stuff in there left over from traditions about Thor, and there’s some stuff added by retailers in the late 1800s. But it all gradually worked together to create a highly significant folk figure.
So it’s interesting that to some of these folks out there, Santa’s whiteness has apparently become one of his essential characteristics, and they will in fact lose their shit if a black man is hired to put on the costume and perform the ritual. From my perspective, Santa’s whiteness, where applicable, is coincidental. The point is that he looks like a jolly grandpa. But if you’re a white supremacist, the idea that your folk deity–and frankly, Santa qualifies–might not look like you in such a significant way (to you) as race is enough to…well…make you go on Fox news and freak out about it.
Meanwhile, Increase Mather is somewhere in the great beyond, crying, because all of these idolaters are going to hell.
As an aside to all this, I worked at one point for a Catholic elementary school where we had a kind of crisis develop right before the winter break when an evangelical teacher was accused by some of the parents of telling the sixth graders that Santa wasn’t real. She had, apparently, told them that only God is deserving of worship, and said some critical things about the veneration of the saints, and, well, it was like 1630 all over again.
Meanwhile, I, the Jewish teacher watching this all play out, kept muttering ‘you haven’t told your sixth grader that Santa isn’t real? Lady, WHAT THE HELL?’
Yeah, I’m not even remotely amused this time.
… ’cause it turns out that while some Religious Fascistoids on the other side of the ocean are upset about a War on Christmas that they think is going on because some people have decided not to be dicks and just say “happy holidays”, well, other Religious Fascistoids have just committed an actual act of war in this part of the world, the second in two days to target a holiday market in Germany.
Hello, conservatives. You can shut the fuck up right now. You wanna fight to defend Christmas ? By all means, go ahead. Go see what can be done to help the survivors and the victims’ families. Go find a way to make people feel safe until at least the end of the holidays. And go provide relief to all the people who feel the least safe (they’re Muslims so you can just cut the Christmas bullshit).
Otherwise you can just shut up and let the adults talk.
Wasn’t St Nick a Greek-speaking Roman living in Turkey? This racial purity stuff is so confusing.
And I love the War on Christmas. It’s the best way to explain to a moderate why extremist conservatives and religious fanatics are the most politically correct people on the planet, and that their condemnation of the left on those grounds is pure psychological projection.
In my opinion, nothing is more effective.
My experience in France is that “merry christmas” is only appropriate if you intent to see the people you say that too before the 1st january, while “happy holiday” is appropriate in any case.
Also, fuck yesterday. Three terrorists attacks in one day, and the less important one is still able to make Poutine angry enough to waste even more life. And fuck the guys who express joy in German taking a hit, because they exist in France.
@Argle: Weirdly enough, I’ve never run into anyone being militant about Easter. It seems like it’s the more theologically significant of the two holidays, too…
Maybe I should start wishing people a Melli Kallikimaka (Hawaiian for “Merry Christmas”), just to see the looks on their faces.
The Claus family postal code is H0H 0H0, a small town of Montreal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Canada
(Iqaluit is X0A 0H0 — seems like they could have reserved 0H0 for somewhere further north.)
Yeah, this. The Trumplings aren’t interested in keeping Christ In Christmas, they’re concerned about keeping Christmas WHITE
Thanks, but I stole it from someone on here so I don’t deserve the credit. XD
@The “white” Santa talk: Doesn’t the idea that Santa’s white stem from Coca Cola advertising, or was that just a random connection my brain made?
I know that’s where we get our idea of the “modern” santa anyways.
And, fun fact: advertising is also to blame for the idea that feminine-presenting people MUST shave their legs, otherwise they’re “gross”. Because shaving companies back in the 1800s decided they could expand their market to women by convincing them their natural body hair was undesirable and gross, and now it’s stuck and I hate everyone who thinks that this must be so, and thus attempts to force it on to every woman/feminine presenting person in their fucking line of sight.
And then they turn around and scoff at black families and communities who celebrate Kwanzaa.
But…I distinctly remember Trump saying that once he was elected, everyone would be saying “Merry Christmas” just because of him. They don’t think he was bullshitting them, do they?
I like Christmas. In my own way, I celebrate it. I respect the fact that others don’t, but if someone does I’ve no trouble saying “Merry Christmas” to them. I have no problem saying “Happy holidays ” otherwise.
It’s called being a decent human. Those who rebel against human decency, who wear t-shirts reading “fuck your feelings”, have no bloody right to demand that their precious feelings about what other people choose to say be treated with deference.
Any so-called Christians among them might want to remember what Jesus had to say about hypocrites, and might want to recall such precepts as the Golden Rule (“do unto others…”).
Here endeth the rant.
@Paradoxical Intention: Modern red-and-white Santa was already in place by the 1880’s. Coca-Cola didn’t start using Santa until the late 1920’s. They may have set the modern conception of Santa Claus in stone, but they claim more credit than they deserve regarding his evolution.
https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/a-pictorial-history-of-santa-claus/
I tend to say “Happy Christmas”, largely thanks to Harry Potter, but then because of my circumstances I also have a very low chance of running across anyone who either doesn’t celebrate Christmas or would be particularly upset by the greeting.