The Feehery Theory

Christmas Contretemps

Posted on December 19, 2013

At my son’s school’s Christmas concert, they not only had all kinds of lyrics with religious overtones, they also acted out the whole baby Jesus thing during the concert.

Not only that, but the whole concert was held in Church. Can you believe that?

Of course, my son goes to a Catholic grade school, which makes this kind of overt signs of religion not only copacetic, it is encouraged.

I was think about my son’s Christmas concert when I saw on the Drudge Report that one school on Long Island tried to take out all religious references in the Christmas song “Silent Night”.

Not sure if you are aware of this, but when you take out the religious references in “Silent Night”, you pretty much have no song.

I am not one of these warriors in the whole “War on Christmas” meme, but sometimes you have to wonder what the Hell is going on in this country.

Santa

There was a brawl on the Internet about the race of Santa Claus.

Megyn Kelly made the declarative assertion that the big fat man with the white beard was white, which others on the left thought was racially insensitive.

We can all agree that Santa is imaginary, right? And if you want your own Santa to be Chinese, or Indian or African or whatever, hey, that’s your prerogative.

In some parts of the world, having a white guy climb down your chimney and into your house is not seen as a particularly positive deal.

The whole Santa thing is a media creation, by the way. And every moment we are talking about Santa, we aren’t really talking about Jesus.

Jesus

I wrote a thing several years ago about Jesus being white. I wrote that because at my old parish on the South Side of Chicago, they now depict Jesus on the Baptismal records as being a black man.

Unlike Santa, Jesus is a historical figure.

It is equally unlikely that Jesus was African as it is that he was Norwegian.

In fact, Jesus was Jewish, so he was probably somewhere in the middle with his appearance.

Not lily white and not dark black.

There are no photographs of Jesus, but there are plenty of paintings, and of course, most of those paintings portray Jesus as having long hair and a beard and looking a little hippie-ish.

I have always taken it as a matter of faith that Jesus had a beard, and that was a lot skinnier than Santa, who also had a beard.

There is some disagreement as to whether Jesus had long hair or not. Paul the Apostle once said that it is disgraceful for men to have long hair, so you can make the case that Paul wouldn’t have said that if Jesus had long hair.

Secondo Pia, the Italian amateur photographer, took a picture of the Shroud of Turin and the negative was a picture of a regal guy with long hair and a beard. Lots of Catholics think that is exactly how Jesus looks, although I think he kind of looks like Robert Eddison, who played the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Speaking of beards, Phil Robertson, of Duck Dynasty fame, got himself in trouble when he gave a Biblical view of homosexuality.

If you read the Bible religiously, which the bearded patriarch of the family apparently does, there is no way that you can come to conclusion that gay sex is okay. And to be fair, it is pretty negative on sex outside of marriage and all kinds of other things (like usury) that seem pretty common these days.

Mr. Robertson expressed those opinions to GQ Magazine, which raises a whole bunch of questions. For example, why did he agree to talk to GQ? Why would GQ want to talk to him? And why would GQ ask him provocative questions about gay sex unless they knew it would get him in trouble?

This is why it is important to hire a good public relations person, people. You hire somebody to help you prepare for these interviews, to help you decide whom you should talk to and who you shouldn’t talk to.

Well, Phil Robertson’s PR person (if he has one) didn’t prepare him for the gay question.

Now, keep in mind, Duck Dynasty appears on A&E, which stands for Arts and Entertainment. Like Brave, this is a network that is pretty popular with a bunch of folks who are perfectly fine with the whole gay thing, which means that there some things you can’t say on A&E that you can say, for example, on Fox News or the Country Music Channel.

It must have been a tough call of A&E because Duck Dynasty is the highest rated cable show in history (or something like that). But the television industry being what it is, I suppose they had no choice but to do what they did.

And of course, that has now caused a huge controversy, akin to what happened with the Santa thing and the Silent Night fight.

I hope this all puts you in the Christmas spirit.