Fox hosts Stuart Varney and Todd Starnes complained on Tuesday that liberals and atheists were “sucking the joy out of Christmas” by defending their right to be free from government-sponsored religion. Varney noted on his Fox Business show that there had been a “victory for Christmas” after a Maine high school recently reversed itself and allowed a teacher to display a Hello Kitty Christmas tree in her classroom…. However, Starnes suggested that the Christmas tree was not religious in nature because it had Hello Kitty ornaments…. “I’m really angry about it,” Varney admitted…. “She said that they’re just sucking the joy out of Christmas,” Starnes remarked. “And that’s exactly what they’re doing.”…. “Sucking the joy out out of Christmas,” Varney agreed with a sigh.
Today is Christmas Eve, and as is usually true this time of year, my hope is that humanity will somehow, some way, find a way to get along. Is it too much to ask that we learn to celebrate our similarities and our shared humanity…instead of hating those who look/live/think/act/believe/live/love differently? Can we see our “differences” merely as expressions of individuality…instead of defining others as “less than” and condemning and hating them as proof positive of sin/licentiousness/atheism/blasphemy/hatred of the baby Jesus?
I’m not going to answer that, because, for at least two days, I’m going to endeavor to look on the bright side. It would be far too easy to default to bemoaning those who make a career out of sucking the joy out of virtually every aspect of life- Christmas included.
Varney and Starnes could manage to find a way to rip the joy from the clutches of children unwrapping gifts on Christmas morning. It’s as if they’d have no reason to exist if they couldn’t find something to vent their considerable righteous outrage on. That they continue to draw paychecks from Rupert Murdoch only serves to illustrate how morally bankrupt and spiritually bereft the Fox News empire truly is. It outstrips Darth Vader’s Death Star for sheer, unmitigated, curmudgeonly miserableness.
Starnes warned that Europe was also in danger of losing its Christian values.
“And look at what’s filling the void,” he said. “You’ve got the rise of Islam across Western Europe right now. I think we need to start paying really close attention because here in this country, we are right on the cusp of that purge, getting rid of Christianity from the public marketplace. And what’s going to fill the void? It will be secular humanism.”
“The issue here is do you have the courage to fight these atheists and these progressives,” Starnes added.
Speaking as a Progressive and an atheist, I can assure Starnes that all people like me really want is for drudges like him and Stuart Varney to stay far, far away. We wish them no harm, but for whatever reason, they view those of us on the Left side of the political spectrum and who consider ourselves good without God to be significants threats to Christendom. That we prefer to live in what we believe to be a reality-based world is our thing. We have no designs on forcing our beliefs on those who happen not to share them (more than could be said for the Dynamic Duo), nor do we wish to destroy and/or harm those who believe differently. To each his (or her…or whatever gender pronoun is appropriate) own. Tolerance and acceptance is kinda funny like that, knowhutimean??
Would that the same could be said for Starnes and Varney, who could find a way to strip the joy from a screaming multiple orgasm.
I’m going to enjoy my holiday season, surrounded as I will be by friends and family- people I love, care for, and respect regardless of their political/religious/ideological/sexual orientation. Nonentities like Starnes and Carney can go stack coal for all I care.
It’s too bad that their source of “joy” seems to be denigrating and demeaning those who happen not to look/live/act/love/think/believe as they do. Their world must be a very dark, depressing place, no?
Merry @!#$%^& Christmas, one and all!!
