Brad Miner writes in his Compass Point blog about Irving Berlin's Christmas.

“December 21st, 2005

Harold Meyerson is a comedian: not exactly Henny Youngman; certainly not Lenny Bruce. But the punchline to his story about how a Jew, Irving Berlin, wrote a great Christmas song is a howler:

?Now the Fox News demagogues want to impose a more sectarian Christmas on us, supplanting the distinctly American holiday we have celebrated lo these threescore years with a holiday that divides us along religious lines. Bill O?Reilly can blaspheme all he wants, but like millions of my countrymen, I take attacks on Irving Berlin?s America personally. ?

Forget for a moment that the locution ?sectarian Christmas? is utterly silly, Mr. Meyerson misses the point of what O?Reilly and John Gibson have been saying: that secularists?especially under the cloak of the First Amendment?s Establishment Clause?are insisting that Christmas celebrations be stripped of their religious content, and this is wrong. Even five years ago, the ?FOX? opinion would have been utterly uncontroversial.

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