No King but Caesar #3: On Candlemas Day, some rancid Christmas leftovers

The rest of the country will talk about some groundhog in Pennsylvania today, but serious Catholics know that the real significance of this day is its being the Feast of the Purification of the B.V.M., the theme of the 4th Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, when our Lord is presented in the Temple at the age of 40 days — and when St. Simeon, he of the Nunc Dimittis, warns our Lady that her Child will someday be the occasion of deep division in Israel and of incredible suffering for herself.

But let me leave the spiritual expositions of these things to the clerics and, instead, by means of illustrating the continuation of St. Simeon’s prophecy in our own time, blow the dust off of one of those old topics I alluded to in yesterday’s comeback post. On the last of the feast-days associated with Christmas, let us go back in time to last Dec. 19th, when the pseudo-Catholic feminoid columnist-author Anna Quindlen proffered her “meditations” on “The Spirit of the Season” for the issue of Newsweek published just after Christmas Day. You will understand after reading it, why I’ve shoved this one into the “No King but Caesar files” also….

She begins by urging her Christian readers to “let us make this solemn vow: we will not insist, in the name of piety, on rubbing the faces of those who don’t believe in Christ’s divinity in the anniversary of his birth.” The concerns of those witnessing the organized effort to banish all reference to Christmas from the American public sphere are just the contemptible sentiments of small minds, worthy only of Scrooge’s legendary “bah, humbug.” Yet, she doesn’t mind telling us the “real reason” why the anti-Christmas campaign exists:

It has little to do with separation of church and state or liberal politics and everything to do with the way the blunt cudgel of Christianity has been heedlessly used, the tyranny of the majority. After years of Jewish parents’ sitting through school concerts listening to the words “It is the night of our dear savior’s birth,” maybe oversensitivity was inevitable, since any other kind of sensitivity had been in short supply. From the trials of witches in Salem to the talking-head evangelists of the present day, we have a rich tradition of faith-based bullying in this country.

She doesn’t bother to demonstrate, aside from one rhetorical phrase, how this so-called “rich tradition” manifested itself in American history, particularly given the fact that this is the country that pioneered the disassociation of religion and government! We’re supposed to accept the idea that people who instinctively felt that their public institutions should reflect their personal convictions (even if in some however-convoluted way) were thereby imposing a “tyranny of the majority.” I don’t suppose, however, that Ms. Quindlen worries so much about majority tyranny when it is used to impose anti-Christian laws like the one in Colorado referenced here yesterday….

See, that’s just it. Whose side is this woman on? Who is her king? Keep reading.

Christmas is being observed exactly where it ought to be, at homes, in our hearts, among friends and families. The modern movement to exhibit it in town squares and mall food courts is precisely what has led to the secularization of one of our most solemn holy days.

“Modern movement”??? In whatever culture Christmas is celebrated (and in American culture, that’s been only since circa 1850), it has always been a supremely public observance: there’s nothing “new” about that! More importantly, though, here we have the direct statement of her thesis: Christmas belongs in the closet, kept out of public view, lest it contaminate the social atmosphere by casting an oppressive pall on those who refuse to accept our Lord, Jesus Christ, as their Savior and their King, as if it were just another form of pornography.

The only way she can accept Christmas in the public square is if it were divested of what she calls “smug superiority disguised as faith,” both on the part of the people celebrating it and in the way they celebrate it — never mind the fact that the much-derided “triumphalism” is central and essential to the true meaning behind our Savior’s nativity, as the traditional Roman liturgy illustrates time and again and again! (Take Psalm II, which is the first of nine Psalms recited at Christmas Matins, and God’s promise to His Anointed that He shall have dominion over the raging Gentiles and the people who have devised “vain things” — a la Anna Quindlen and her ilk, for example….) And what is the whole “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” business, pray tell? What the opponents of Christianity are all too willing to believe is just a bunch of insecure men using religious dogma to “lord it” over everyone else, is actually, to some degree or another, some sincere recognition that men must reflect in all their actions, public as well as private, their professed recognition of Christ as sovereign Lord and King of the universe!

This woman says she’s a Catholic, and yet reserves her compassion only for the enemies of our Lord; for those who recognize (in however any small kind of way) the kingship of Christ, she only vomits her contemptible “bah, humbug.” So she who can’t tolerate the “triumphalism” of orthodox Christianity nevertheless doesn’t mind foisting upon us some moralizing of her own:

So if people are really worried about keeping Christ in Christmas, they might personally exhibit tolerance and charity, kindness and generosity…. And if saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” offers someone who is not of your faith more comfort and joy—well, ’tis the season for both.

Let’s keep in mind that people like Ms. Quindlen have their own definitions for terms like “tolerance and charity, kindness and generosity,” and it is blatantly one-sided in its application: Christians are expected to kowtow to their enemies without expecting any like consideration in return, nor are the anti-Christians expected to show any of these qualities to Christians.

Judas may have sold out our Lord for 30 pieces of silver, but at least he didn’t go around bad-mouthing Him or His disciples on top of that….