One of the most odious aspects of the so-called War on Christmas is Western appeasement of Muslim sensibilities.
Consider recent events in Sweden, where St. Lucia’s Day has been celebrated for centuries. According to Britannica:
St. Lucia’s Day [is a] festival of lights celebrated in Sweden, Norway, and the Swedish-speaking areas of Finland on December 13 in honour of St. Lucia (St. Lucy). …The festival begins with a procession led by the St. Lucia designee, who is followed by young girls dressed in white and wearing lighted wreaths on their heads and boys dressed in white pajama-like costume singing traditional songs. The festival marks the beginning of the Christmas season in Scandinavia, and it is meant to bring hope and light during the darkest time of the year.
Not anymore. At least one school in Sweden has compromised the celebration in order to appease its Muslim students. According to a Dec. 10, 2022 Swedish report (English translation here),
Do you expect Santas, caroler and gingerbread men in the Lucia parade? Not at St Mary’s School (Mariehemsskolan) in Umeå. There it has been decided that the 40 or so children aged 7 to 10 who will take part in the Lucia procession will do so without the traditional elements of a Lucia celebration. The reason for this is Muslim children who dropped out of last year’s celebration because their parents were uncomfortable with the connection between the celebration and Christmas…. The children will also not sing the traditional Lucia songs. The choir director says that many children have been excluded over the years because Swedish schools focused so much on the Lucia festival and it was “so incredibly traditionally Christian.”
Note how the choir director makes it seem that Muslim children were “excluded,” when in fact they, or rather their parents, were the ones who chose exclusion.
Now rid of any distinctly Christmas/Christian trappings, St. Mary’s school posted a picture of one of its recent and highly “watered-down” Lucia rehearsals—boasting a very young Muslim girl dressed in full black hijab.
Such is Islam’s ongoing “contribution” to Sweden. Since that Scandinavian nation opened its door to multiculturalism and migration—the overwhelming majority of which has been Muslim—violent crimes have increased by 300% and rapes by 1,472%. (These figures are based on a 2015 report; as Muslim migration has continued to soar over the last nearly eight years, these stats have likely gotten worse.)
Aside from bringing an exponential rise in mayhem, the growing Muslim population is, as this recent development attests, also slowly but surely erasing—“canceling”—Sweden’s indigenous culture and former Christian heritage. In this case, however, their success is entirely predicated on Sweden’s willing cooperation.
Sweden, of course, is symbolic of the West in general. Expressions of Christmas, particularly the Nativity scene, are being suppressed all throughout the West to appease Muslims. A few examples come from the UK (here and here), Italy (here and here), Germany (here and here), and Belgium (here and here).
In New York City, beginning as far back as 2002, public schools were allowed to display the religious symbols of all religions—including the star and crescent of Islam—except for Christianity, with a particular emphasis on banning the Nativity scene.
It’s also worth noting that not a few of those Western people engaged in such self-suppression are self-identified “Christians”—including the pope himself.
What makes all this appeasement especially loathsome is that, of all non-Christians, it is precisely Muslims who, far from reciprocating such “sensitivity,” do the exact opposite. If anything, the Christmas season often heralds nothing but a rise in the persecution of Christian minorities throughout the Muslim world.
During Christmas of 2015, for example, I made it a point to closely follow and collate instances of persecution for an article. A few examples follow:
- USA: Muslim terrorists attacked a Christmas party in San Bernardino, killing 14 people, including a Christian woman from Iran who thought she had successfully fled persecution by coming to America.
- Nigeria: Muslim terrorists of Boko Haram slaughtered 16 Christians, including children, on Christmas Day. In other years, the jihadist group has bombed or burned several packed churches on Christmas Day. One of the deadliest occurred in 2011, when the jihadists bombed a Catholic church during Christmas mass, killing 39 and wounding hundreds.
- Philippines: Muslim terrorists slaughtered ten Christians on Christmas Eve, in order to “make a statement.”
- Iraq: On Christmas Eve, Islamic terrorists bombed ten homes and a convent in a Christian village.
- Bethlehem: In the birthplace of Christmas, and scene of the Nativity, Muslims stoned a Christian leader and, elsewhere, torched a public Christmas tree.
- Belgium: “Allah akbar” yelling Muslims torched a large, public Christmas tree in Brussels.
- Bangladesh: Christmas midnight mass was canceled due to severe threats of terrorism.
- Indonesia: Christmas mass was not canceled, though heavy security—150,000 personnel—was posted all around churches due to threats of terrorism.
Some might argue that most of these examples were the work of terrorists or other “extremists”—that true Muslims are welcoming of Christmas.
Au contraire. During that same Christmas, the authorities of several Muslim nations “cracked down” on Christmas celebrations.
In Iran, 10 Christians quietly celebrating the Nativity in a house were arrested, shackled, and hauled off on Christmas Day. Moreover, the governments of three other Muslim nations—Brunei, Tajikistan, and Somalia—formally banned Christmas on pain of lengthy prison sentences (from celebrating its Gospel message to putting up trees, dressing like Santa Claus, and/or giving gifts). The Islamic clerics of Brunei summarized the general rationale: “Using religious symbols like crosses, lighting candles, putting up Christmas trees, singing religious songs, sending Christmas greetings … are against Islamic faith.”
Although the above examples come from just one year, 2015, every Christmas season, before and after, sees the same sort of persecution by Muslims. For example, whenever America’s great “friend and ally,” Saudi Arabia, suspects Christian laborers of, as one Saudi official once complained, “plotting to celebrate Christmas,” they are arrested and punished.
Christmas 2022 hasn’t even arrived and Islamic hostility is already brewing. A few days ago in France a Muslim man sawed down a Christmas tree that had been erected in and by the officials of Lormont; a few days before that in Italy, another Muslim man “terrorized everyone” in the town of Sora as they participated in a Christmas tree lighting celebration. Lest the “religious,” that is, Islamic, motivation be missed, both Muslim men hollered Islam’s ancient war cry—“Allahu Akbar!”
If this is how some Muslim minorities react to the overt symbols of Christmas in Western nations, where they are “guests,” how might they react in the Muslim world itself? Well, in Tajikistan, a supposedly “secularized” Muslim nation that is seldom associated with “radicalism,” a Muslim man screaming “infidel!” stabbed another young man to death—simply because he was dressed as Santa Clause. In Jordan, police arrested a man for dressing as Santa Clause.
Such is the lamentable—if not downright disgusting—state of affairs. In the West, where Muslims are granted all sorts of concessions—beginning with the gift of migrating from the Third to the First World— Christmas is increasingly being stifled, lest it offends them. Meanwhile, in the Muslim world, the Christmas season sees only an uptick of the persecution of Christian “infidels.”
Although both are bad, the distinction (more fully discussed here) should not be missed: Christmas is under attack in the West, not because of Muslims, but because of homegrown Western elements who despise the Christian holiday and everything it represents. Rather than be honest, however, they use Muslims as pawns and pretexts.
That, by the way, is the case with everything Western people are told they must suppress—beginning with their religion—in the name of “inclusivity.” In the end, this exercise in self-suppression is not about accommodating minority groups but rather sabotaging Western civilization from within.
This article first appeared on The Stream.
But the fundamental and overriding moral code of Christianity is altruism and self-sacrifice for God, Jesus, and neighbor. According to the leading article today here at FPM, “Why the Christmas Story Never Ceases to Amaze”, Scott S. Powell writes, “When he asked which was the greatest commandment in the law, Jesus answered simply that if we love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, we will have fulfilled all the laws.”
Well then aren’t Muslims our neighbors? Didn’t Jesus die on a cross for worthless sinners to save them? What does it matter if Christians die of altruism and self-sacrifice, are not Christians promised eternal life after-death if they die of self-sacrificial altruism for God, Jesus, and neighbor?
According to Christian doctrine this brief life on earth is but a brief pilgrimage through a veil of tears, a brief punishment for Original Sin. A Christian is not supposed to cling to this brief, mortal, life but seek salvation through self-sacrifice, self-denial, self-abnegation, and self-immolation, emulating and following Christ’s example, in order to enter the Kingdom of Christ after death.
You’ll pardon me if I don’t adhere to your warped debauched description of my Christian faith. Now go and sin no more.
Of course you don’t adhere to a consistent practice of altruism and self-sacrifice, no one can, not if they want to live. The moral code of altruism and self-sacrifice makes a hypocrite of any one who wants to live another minute.
The only way to practice altruism and self-sacrifice seriously and with complete integrity is to commit instant suicide.
Jesus is the reason for the season.
If we’re all God’s children, what makes Jesus so special?
We are not a ‘All’ Gods Children.
Scripture attests to this. Before you ask such absurd question, you should get familiar with the Holy Sacred Scriptures.
I have tried to understand Rand and her views, read books that you recommended but I remain unconvinced that Rand’s philosophy has any practical merit, all you have done is pushed me, and I suspect everyone here, closer to God and religion than at any time in my life.
I should thank you and wish you a Merry Christmas, even if you can’t understand the religious significance of Christmas day you should be able to see that the longest night of this year and every year is noticeably shorter and the light of day noticeably longer on December 25th.
Merry Christmas
All I have done is push you closer to God and Christianity? I haven’t done anything of the sort. I can’t push you anywhere you already didn’t want to go. Objectivism simply uses reason to determine the facts of reality and those facts scare you. So now you run back more eagerly to the safety of the Christian fantasy because reality has scared you. What are the facts of the human condition, the human reality? We are mortal and we die, and death is forever, death scares you. We are essentially alone in our own bodies and our own minds, life demands that we be self-reliant in a fundamental way, we can help each other, but nevertheless even that help has to be used by us within our esential aloneness, so you run back to the fantasy that some omnipotent God can rescue you from your essential aloneness, you desire a constant, supernatural, friend. Self-reliance scares you….
When we break things, when we harm others, when we harm ourselves, those things cannot always be repaired or forgiven. Some sins are unpardonable, because life does not have a re-do button. So you wish for your omnipotent God to forgive you, redeem you, repair what you broke, by hitting some supernatural repair button. That life happens only once and there is no repair for many, or most, of the harm we have done, scares you.
You fear death, which also means you fear life, so you wish for the safety an eternal after-life utopia.
But, Merry (secular) Christimas, a Christmas that celebrates man the hero, man the producer, and life on earth. Just because a pleasure doesn’t last forever, doesn’t make it any less a pleasure. And just because life doesn’t last forever, doesn’t make it any less worth fighting for and living it properly and morally.
Just for the record I’m not afraid of death in the slightest.
You’re a lost cause sadly and you will convert nobody to objectivism until you stop preaching.
As Christians, we do not fear death because Christ defeated death. Paul said to be absent on the body is to be present with the Lord. We are joyful. Something we have not heard from you. We’ll keep you in prayer. Merry Christmas!
Whatever’s is not eternal is eternally worthless. If all you are is dust in the wind, then nothing matters, not even a long life. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,” but lo, nothing beside remains. Even the universe itself will be destroyed by the ravages of time. The Epicureans were more rational than you Objectivists, for at least they made sure to enjoy their lives, rather than squandering them on futile work.
Remember King Herod wanted the Christ Child murdered so Mary and Joseph had to leave soon after
The deadly appeasement must stop. Violent, bloody, deadly defensive warfare is compatible with Christianity.
Self-defense is compatible with Christianity? Hmmm, if you water it down and dilute the faith. Yeh, then it’s possible.
But if you take it truly seriously, why bother to go on living on earth? If a Muslim kills you as you try to convert him to Christianity you’ll be rewarded with eternal life in the Kingdom of Christ after the Muslim kills you.
So why bother with self-defense to go on living on earth?
Dude you marbles have cracked. Check into the nearest lib arts academy.
No, it’s not that my marbles are cracked, is that you have little faith. Sure, you probably believe in the Christian Heaven but not enough to renounce this life.
With your reasoning every one of any faith should move to Canada. Gov. help provided.
Christianity prepared the way for the welfar state.
“Holy Scripture and the Welfare State” – Richard M. Salsman
https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardsalsman/2011/04/28/holy-scripture-and-the-welfare-state/?sh=1aef1c7924f2
Appeasement of Muslims and jihad entities is an act futility. .
Just about anything can offend a Muslim . Some on them are so very devoutly committed to Islam that in some Islamic counties just being a non-Muslim cause a such a Muslim to offended.
So why even try to be “sensitive to the sensibilities” of Muslims. Its foolish to ” bent over backwards” to please them. They will only view such actions “weakness” and thus increase in the arrogance and contempt for people who aren’t Muslims.
There’s no use in attempting to “walk on egg shells ” not to offend or upset them.
They will only view such actions “weakness” I agree with you entirely, & talking of weakness, I lived in an Islamic county for many years. I discovered that they have a saying that says, “Kindness is Weakness” & therefor it is to be exploited for their benefit.
Arguably,there is something to be said for your position,but we have no one to blame except our very own declining interest and attendance in the Christian Church.Young people,for several reasons,among them sexual abuse,anti-abortion rules,failure to embrace LGBGT+ communities,etc..just don’t attend Church,like we used to do in my time and in older generations.There is also a trend to inclusion in our western liberal democracies,embracing all communities and identities,necessitating accommodations .Really,we accommodate Jews,we even celebrate Hanukkah along with Christmas.And sure,we should not feel guilty about cherishing our own traditions,and expecting other religions and cultures to respect those values.Most Western countries have Human Rights legislation,and laws and traditions that violate these may have to change and be “updated”.. Just sayin’. Merry Christmas..Happy Hanukkah.
thinking they do God a favor they kill and kill and kill
some day, they’ll hear directly what He has to say about it.
It seems to me that Christians are admonished to turn the other cheek. But after that, they can defend themselves. They have to give Caesar what is his, but not everything belongs to Caesar. More belongs to God. So of course there are limits on Christian subservience. It is expected that Christians must protect other Christians and even altruistic non=Christians. But they do not have to martyr themselves. Generally speaking, the attitude of Muslims is not compatible with Christian values. They should integrate and accommodate themselves to the West, not expect to go on living as they do according to sharia when they are in the West.
The best thing is to stop mass migration from the Muslim world in order to protect the Christian world. Muslims take an in your face attitude toward Christians and Jews, they should not be given the chance to do that in the West.
The only reason these islamic thugs can & have prevailed is solely due to leftist politicians, their DNC stenographers in media, and weak suck-ups like Bush.
A familiar example, among thousands, are when the “six flying imams” did an “in your face” dry run on U.S. Airways.
They pushed the envelope on how much bullshit they could pull until removed.
Junior high student, Ahmed Mohamed did his own dry run with a clock, exposed wiring, & a metal case – made to look like a bomb.
All these America-hating pricks were financially rewarded or given red carpet treatment at Facebook, Google, and the White House.
Our weaknesses were not only probed without consequence, but these ostentatious “dry runs” were rewarded.
That’s how western culture, far superior to all others, dies in darkness.
islam has been a cancer on our society for a long time. muslims who do not like living in america should go back to their home country
Like the late Shah, countries need to keep a boot on the neck of the terrorist. It’s literally an existential problem.