Suzanne Fields, Washington Times columnist, reflects on how the legacy of Ann Frank, the doomed girl whose diary illuminated the lives of Holocaust victims, is becoming politicized:

We’re asked to vote “yes” or “no” on a series of complicated issues such as defining permissible degrees of censorship, rights of privacy and religious freedom, all framed in narrow contexts designed for short attention spans. Should the Danish cartoons that mocked the radical Islam have been published? After 9/11, was George W. Bush right to say that “We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism . . . Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists? ”
After the visitor presses a button to answer, the screen flashes the result, as well as how everyone else voted. On the day I was there, the votes were fairly evenly divided.

That’s a bad sign. The Holocaust should never be addressed in the same category as “normal” issues like how to manage smut or when the police can legally sneak into your house, or whether the God Is Nude! cult can hold public parades on Main Street …

Watching your neighbours led away to death - and even helping to send them to their death - is NOT a normal issue. It’s catastrophic. A number of such moral catastrophes occurred during the twentieth century, the age of materialism.  I believe we should never treat them as if they were equivalent to normal politics.

Anne Frank would be 78 years old, had she lived, Fields notes. It is interesting to learn that, although she was Jewish, she liked Christmas:

As I walked out of the house, I watched a man dressed in a St. Nicholas costume dart into a pub nearby for something to warm himself against the wintry chill. I was reminded that in her diary, Anne wrote of enjoying Hanukkah, but that “St. Nicholas Day was much more fun.”

Lots of people who are not Christians like Christmas, actually. It originated as a midwinter festival celebrating light and warmth. It was adopted by Christian leaders so as to accommodate European pagans who were converting in large numbers to Christianity (but probably did not want to give up their favourite annual celebration). No one knew for sure the date of Jesus’ birth, so celebrating it on December 25, the height of the accustomed festivities, was agreeable and convenient.

This history increases the offensiveness of the annual attempt to shut Christmas down, in my view. The shutter downers try to read everyone’s mind, claiming to “know” what members of various “groups” would find offensive and what various traditional symbols really “mean” or what various colours ”imply” (no easy task, considering how many of these symbols and colours either predate Christianity or are otherwise too ancient to be associated with  anything other than our own recollections of holidays). But if we go by experience, very few people other than the secular activists find Christmas offensive.

Fortunately, lots of people are beginning to notice the tiresome activists and react to them:

Burt Prelutsky, for example, recommends that the activists have themselves a dreary little Christmas, but they probably don’t need any help with that.

Paul Greenberg enthuses (not!) “Ah, tradition! What would we do without it? It just wouldn’t be the season without a squabble over religious displays on public property. ” Of course, there should not be a problem with religious displays of any faith on public property, as long as they are not political or dissing other religions; it’s the squabble we don’t need.

Also, in the Humbuggery stakes, Ron Paul tried mixing it up with Mike Huckabee recently over Christmas, with - according to Nathan Tabor - disastrous results for Paul. (I agree that “fascism carrying a cross” is way over the top.)

Well, defeat them all. It’s easy. Enjoy the seasonal decor and festivities and be kind and generous to everyone, including people you are glad you only see a few times a year.

Also, today at the Mindful Hack

Should churches criticize bestselling atheists?

Alzheimer is NOT an immediate mental death sentence

Is your brain full of anachronistic junk?

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