Occasionally I leave the house: You won’t catch me at the mall until – well, never – but I have been out to stores and restaurants recently and I noticed that there is one arena in which the put-Christ-back-in-Christmas crowd is winning the Christmas wars: The piped-in music in commercial establishments is predominantly Christmas-related – by a factor, it seemed to me, of 10 to one.
In particular, we were in the Aaron Brothers art supplies store down the street for over an hour on Saturday. Could there be a more Jewish-sounding store name than Aaron Brothers? And we were in West Hollywood, in a metropolitan area that – according to unverified urban myth – has the third or fourth largest Jewish population in the world.
Nonetheless, while we were in the store, the satellite music channel playlist went from one Christmas hymn to another and another: “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Starry Starry Night” and even “Ave Maria.” Not a single song mentioned bells.
This is typical of rightwing tactics. They emphasize the visual predominance of “Happy Holidays” messages in commercial settings while carefully omitting a key sensory element: Sound.
Of course, the MSM hasn’t caught onto this and never will.
Btw, there’s evidence the public isn’t buying into the whole War on Christmas charade invented by Fox and friends:
Despite an avalanche of mentions on Fox News, The War on Christmas [written by Fox newsreader John Gibson] continues to do disappointing business. It’s nowhere near breaking through the New York Times best-seller’s list. It’s not even included on USA Today’s expanded list of the top 150 best selling books. In fact, according to Amazon.com’s sales rankings, The War on Christmas is stuck in the 200’s; No. 286 to be specific. The book has sold approximately 30,000 copies since hitting book store shelves nearly two months ago. That’d be decent business for a first-time non-fiction writer. But for a Fox News anchor whose employer won’t stop plugging the title, that sales total is middling at best, which only confirms how manufactured Fox News’ crusade is — even its loyal, Red State viewers aren’t buying it.
