Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of author Douglas De Bono

Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of
author Douglas De Bono.

Tolerance is a Two Way Street

Merry Christmas! Let me say that again: Merry CHRISTmas. Indeed I hope everyone had a great time exchanging gifts, seeing family and enjoying a respite from the normal schedule.

What is Christmas about? In politically correct circles we have reduced Christmas to Happy Holidays. We need to be cautiously tolerant of the Muslim, Buddhists and Hindi in our midst. Funny, I do not recall anyone wishing me Merry Allah or Happy Buddha. Then there is Kwanza. This is nothing more than a make believe holiday established in 1966 to celebrate African heritage and promote community values.

Which Africans are we celebrating? Idi Amin, who systematically took his country down the toilet during the 1970s? Perhaps we wish to point at the Rwandan genocide or the tragedy in the Sudan? How about White South African and Rhodesian apartheid rule? Maybe the Africans we are celebrating come from above the Sahara, which have become staging areas for terrorist organization in the last thirty years.

When it comes to Christmas, the church/state separatists among us wish to ban Christmas songs from school Christmas concerts. They attempt to eradicate crosses from city seals in southern California. They bring lawsuits against cities to eliminate manger scene from city displays.

The arguments generally follow the same tripe: Christian symbols should be replaced by non-Christian symbols to demonstrate our tolerance for other view points. America is an incredibly tolerant nation. We were so tolerant that we allowed the September 11th hijackers to register to vote, over stay their visas and acquire driver’s licenses. Our tolerance bought 3,000 dead, half a trillion dollars in economic loss, war and the involuntary redesign of the New York skyline.

Tolerance is a two way street. If you wish to celebrate African heritage and promote community values, be my guest. Or if you choose to bow down to a rock in Mecca five days each day, go ahead. I think you are terribly mistaken in your beliefs, but I will not infringe on the free exercise of your religion.

Come December 25th, I choose to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ (there I go dropping intolerant words again). I might want to sing Joy to the World. I might enjoy seeing a manger scene on public property. After all, what is Christmas about? It is not the birth of Buddha in Bethlehem. It is about the advent of a Savior. Whether you choose to believe that Jesus is the Son of God or not, does not alter the fact that a great many of us do.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests,” is good news to end the year on. So I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.