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 …Â think there’s a War on Christmas to 25% who say there isn’t …Â 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.
@Nequam
@argle
People have strange attitudes about Christmas indeed. While many conservatives use it as a litmus test of resolve to restore “American conservative cultural Christianity ” to predominance, a minority of Christians note the pagan trappings of the holiday and consider the whole thing an abomination. My wife knows people like that. In fact, in many parts of the States Christmas was not even a public holiday until fairly recently!
¡Boas festas!
You’re welcome, by the way. 😉
What would the alt-right make of the greeting “Merry Christmas”, if they weren’t on roughly the same ideological hemisphere as those demanding its use? I’d imagine that they’d deride it as ‘virtue signalling’, a hollow gesture only meant to show one’s adherence to social strictures. Sad.
This just continues to reinforce in me the notion that the hard-right believes in magic words.
That certain specific words will magically benefit or harm people. It’s why they think they can’t be racist if they’re not using specific racial slurs. It’s why they think the president using the exact phrase “radical islamic terrorism” will magically help reduce terrorism. It’s probably even why they say “cuck” so much.
In addition to “magic” words, the hard right is very conscious of words that indicate whether you are “with us” or “ag’in’ us”
“Merry xmas” tells me that, yes, you agree that our white cultural bedrock is under siege by “others” (though it might not mean that to YOU at all)… similarly, “Happy holidays” indicates that either you are one of the others or you don’t realize that you are complicit in the destruction of our culture.
To the white culture fundamentalists, the refusal to use the public treasury to fund a nativity on the courthouse grounds is an act of genocide.
This article just made me realize that I haven’t seen one facebook meme demanding that people say ‘merry Christmas’. Usually I start seeing those around late October/early December .
Personally I think people should be allowed to use what ever greeting they prefer and other should try and accept it in the spirit it was given provided it was a friendly one.
During my ten years as a retail worker I learned the easiest way to get through the holidays* is to just mirror back what you get from the custys. I still do that. Here in one of the California red zones, surprisingly, it was generally no specific holiday greeting at all. Thankfully, store management didn’t require us to offer seasonal greetings.
*I am thoroughly enjoying my second holiday season of ignoring (to the extent that’s possible) Christmas. I worked in a craft store and we started getting the Christmas fabric in May. May!! Because baby Jesus requires new seasonal quilts and tree skirts every year or something?
Ten Christmas seasons in retail has killed my holiday spirit for a good, long while.
As Santa was a Russian bishop, it’s pretty safe to say he was white. But Jesus on the other hand, certainly was not. He would have been dark skinned like most Mediterranean people.
The White, blue eyed Jesus is Hollywood fiction.
I’m quite partial to “Have a cool Yule”. That does get me the occasional eyeroll. I think that’s because I still say cool though, rather than not saying Christmas.
As a pleasantry to random people I usually just go with the standard ‘Happy Christmas’. I note a few of our American Mammotheers seem to find that one unusual. Is that not used across the Pond?
In the States, “Merry Christmas” is more common than “Happy Christmas.”
Christmas is a pagan festival anyway, it’s highly unlikely that Jesus was born on December 25th. That used to be Saturnalia, and also the birth of Nimrod/ Osiris the Sun God.
There is a theory that 25 December was chosen, not to usurp Saturnalia or Sol Invictus or Mithras etc, but because it used to be a belief that righteous men always died on the date of their conception.
So they did a back calculation from one of the suggested dates for Easter.
@Alan: Presumably not the one that eventually won out. That’d be a hell of a preemie.
@ Falconer
Well as you’ll know settling the date of Easter was a major controversy in the early church.
But presumably someone in authority decided on 25 March l (or would it be April? My arithmetic skill not up to taking 9 away from 12). Which then meant Jesus must have been conceived on the same date, hence the 25 December birthday.
Or maybe they just assumed anyone that cool must have been a Capricorn. 😉
@Alan Robertshaw
“Now, history says Christ was likely not a Capricorn
But if you want to share our Yule, we won’t care when he’s born
Come celebrate the dawning of the Sun King’s bright rebirth
And if you practice what you preach, we’ll all have peace on Earth”
–Emerald Rose, “Santa Claus is Pagan Too”
One of my favorite Yule songs! Full of ever-so-gentle salt thrown at self-righteous Christians who think they own the month of December and the concept of celebrating therein.
@ karalora
I’m not that bothered about Christmas but I love the solstice.
That’s less my pagan sensibilities though and more “Hooray; the days are getting longer again!”
Wait… wasn’t the historical figure of St Nicholas from Turkey? In that case, he’d very obviously have brown skin. Are Republicans just misinformed about history, or are they willfully ignorant of historical fact?
On reflection, the likely answer is both.
Well, nothing is obvious when it comes to the ancient Mediterranean. Many Turks themselves are very fair, but Turkey at the time was the Eastern Roman empire, and mostly Greek trade colonies. Nicholas’ family were ethnic Greeks.
The reconstruction of the bones at Bari that are reputedly his end up looking like this,
http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/real-face/
or this
http://www.colindsmith.com/blog/2012/12/20/nikolaos-bishop-of-myra/
The coloring’s an informed guess, of course. But he probably didn’t look like someone’s German grandpa.
Of course, the Nicholas thing I love is the tendency of Catholic bloggers over the past few years to reference his infamous showdown with Arius at the Nicean Council. My favorite meme’s text reads: “I came here to give presents and punch heretics, and I’m all out of presents.”
Question: wasn’t it less than a hundred years ago that conservative Protestants wanted to ban Christmas as a Catholic holiday?
And Conan and fridges virgin both ninja’d me.
@alan: as I understand it, Easter was originally directly tied to the Jewish Passover, as the Synoptic Gospels state quite clearly that Christ was crucified during the Passover festival.
However, after Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans, various communities of the Jewish diaspora started disagreeing about their calendar, which left the Christian community at some odds with each other about when to celebrate Easter.
So, at Nicea I, they just decided to make it the first new moon after the spring equinox. Probably to make their sun worshipping emperor (Constantine) happy.
Anyone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
Hello all,
I lurk often but don’t think I have commented before. Personally, my favorite explanation for Christmas is this one.
There is something pretty badass about the idea that when our ancestors, whomever they may be, were faced with an annual event that would have definitely killed a large percentage of their friends and family, they decided to have a kick ass party. Though, I guess that only applies to those who lived above the equator. Maybe aboriginal peoples had a “Christmas in July” for lack of a better term.
Unrelated to anything but David (or anyone else), have you ever read the book “The Authoritarians” by Bob Altemeyer? I am kind of interested on your thoughts on the ideas presented in that book in light of the manosphere and “alt-right” movement. You can read it for free with the author’s full permission here.
And now I move back into the shadows.
This reminds me of a recent Onion article: “Nation’s Oppressed Christians Huddle Underground To Light Single Shriveled Christmas Shrub“.
A sample: “At great personal risk, the Christians were said to have smuggled in a few strings of colored mini lights, tinsel, popcorn garlands, Hallmark Keepsake ornaments, and other contraband in order to trim the shrub inside the subterranean chamber, the last place in America where they were safe to celebrate Christmas.”
In personal news, it’s my first day off work for the holidays and I’ve got a cold. Sniffles, headache, etc. Grrr.
@ jokester
That tallies with what I’ve always been told. Those early church convocations are pretty fascinating. It’s interesting to see how what people regard as the inerrant will of god was so often decided by a committee after arguments and a vote.
What amuses me about the Nicean Creed is how it’s so obviously not a prayer or religious invocation but a statement of agreed principles. What with all the qualifications and subclauses, it reads exactly like what we call a compromise agreement; the sort of thing you get after lawyers have settled a dispute.
My condolences, epitome. I’ve had a cold for two of my last three Christmases, and while I’ve so far resisted all the colds rolling through the office, I’m not looking forward to the potential from the 6 hour bus trip on Thursday.