Tired of that new meme out there, telling you there is a war on Christmas? Look around you today. Are many stores open? Are children playing in the street? Are there sleigh marks on all the roofs? Are there more poor people now than in the recent past? Did you get that Xbox 360 you wanted for Christmas? Is gasoline and heating oil much more expensive these days? If any of these things are true, it simply means that the John Birch Society is winning something other than a war on Christmas. Yes, dear Virginia, there is a grinch and it has been trying to steal your special day since 1959. But it’s not Christmas they care about, it’s all about your economic prosperity — they think you have too much of it. First, let’s read a little bit about who these John Birch folks are:

The John Birch Society was, for a long time, the principle radical right and anti-communist organization in the United States. Founded by Robert Welch, a retired candymaker from Massachusetts, the group was initially based upon a monologue delivered by Welch in a hotel room to a number of like-minded people. This monologue was later transcribed The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, given to each new member. The name of the Society comes from John Birch, an American intelligence officer killed by Communists in China in August, 1945.

Unlike many other groups the John Birch Society had heavy backing from industrialist and corporations, particularly oil companies and the defense industry. This money made the Society the best funded of all radical right organizations, allowing them to set up thousands of chapters across the country.

[T]he Birch Society started a campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton for alleged connections with Chinese interests and on charges of treason and bribery. Within months of the Society’s call for impeachment, news of the Monica Lewinsky affair broke out and the Society’s voice was drowned out by a sex-crazed media deluge. Clinton was eventually impeached, however not on the charges the Society had hoped to bring, nor was he convicted or removed from office. Nevertheless, the impeachment campaign’s relative success bolstered the Birch Society and its membership, publication circulation, and finances grew further.

The JBS continues to press for an end to United States membership in the United Nations, an idea that has seen more support in recent days, and it points to the Utah legislature’s recent resolution calling for the US to take such a step, as well as the actions of several other states where the Society’s membership has been active, as evidence of the effectiveness of JBS efforts.

Now what does this have to do with a war on Christmas? Let us take a look at a portion of an excellent article by Hendrick Hertzberg that appeared recently in The New Yorker. (by all means read it through to the end).

[A]t the end of the placid nineteen-fifties the John Birch Society, a pioneering organization of the bug-eyed right, took up the Yuletide cudgels. As Michelle Goldberg recalled recently in Salon, a 1959 Birch pamphlet warned that “the Reds” and “the U.N. fanatics” had launched an “assault on Christmas” as ”part of a much broader plan, not only to promote the U.N., but to destroy all religious beliefs and customs.” The enemy’s strategy, the Birchers warned, was to aim at the soft underbelly and shake it like a bowlful of jelly. “What they now want to put over on the American people is simply this: Department stores throughout the country are to utilize U.N. symbols and emblems as Christmas decorations.” The focus on department stores was a prophetic insight, but its full potential as a weapon in Christmas war-fighting was not realized until the next century.

Posted by Buck Batard at December 25, 2005 06:49 AM

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