(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) The mainstream media rag, The Atlantic, is boasting about the fall of Christmas in the warming kulturkampf.
The Atlantic story, entitled “The War on Christmas is Winning: The holiday is becoming a less religious occasion for millions of Americans,” is unusual because it is honest about the war on Christmas.
Much more common is the standard leftist denial of a cultural conflict over Christmas like the Huffington Post ran a few days ago.
The Atlantic, unsurprisingly, gives some credence to the standard leftist skepticism.
“[Liberals] are right that there’s no coordinated push to downplay the holiday or its religious roots, but conservatives aren’t reacting to nothing,” it wrote.
“Christmas is becoming less of a religious holiday for millions of people,” it continued. “If a war on Christmas exists, it’s gaining ground in a long battle of attrition.”
The Atlantic notes that 93% of Americans celebrated Christmas in 2019. While that number is down 3% from 1996, it proves Americans still love celebrating Christmas.
However, The Atlantic shows that the ways Americans celebrate Christmas are rapidly secularizing.
In 2005, 47% of Americans classified their Christmas celebrations as “strongly religious,” but in 2019, that number dropped to 35%, according to a Gallop poll.
Almost 75% of Americans accepted public Christmas displays in 2014, but in 2017 the number dropped to 66%, according to a Pew poll.
Even saying the word Christmas is falling out of fashion. In 2005 about half of Americans cared that people wished them a Merry Christmas, but in 2017 only 32% preferred Merry Christmas, whereas over half of Americans said they didn’t care.
Season’s greetings vary within America. Over sixty percent of Americans living in the West and East coasts prefer “happy holidays,” 51% of Southerners prefer “Merry Christmas,” while 65% of the Midwest prefers “Merry Christmas.”
Overall, The Atlantic has admitted that cultural conservatives were correct. The secularization of America has led to the decline in traditional American values, especially Christianity.
The smug acknowledgment and celebration of the death of Christmas may be only the beginning of secularist escalations in the culture war.
