December 17, 2007--Making America Safe For Xmas Trees
Here I was feeling relieved that Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly had again this year rescued Christmas from the secularists. So, while doing my holiday, sorry, Christmas shopping at JCPenney, instead of the cashiers wishing me a “Happy Holiday,” they have been ordered to chirp, “Merry Christmas.”
Forget for the moment that I'm Jewish. In this Christian Nation even Jews celebrate Christmas-- any excuse to shop—and although we have been labeled Christ Killers, we take pleasure in reminding those who accuse us of this that (1) he was Jewish after all; and (2) didn’t he have to be killed in order to be resurrected?
So I’m OK with the “Merry Christmas.” And I’m also OK that this annual crusade of O’Reilly’s makes him look like a nut. Which is a good thing since he is a nut.
But I not OK with something else he indirectly had a hand in messing with—he and others who unrelentingly rail about how our porous borders allow illegal immigrants to sneak into our country as well as contribute to the outsourcing of large segments of our economy (porousness, you see, works in both directions) these cranks have created a Christmas tree crisis. And how can we celebrate Christmas in the manner O'Reilly would require us to do if a large part of our supply—trees from Canada—are being turned away at our northern border?
Allow me to make this personal.
In New York City, down by St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, on Second Avenue at 10th Street, for as long as we have lived in the neighborhood, every year on the stroke of December 1st, one Daniel Lemay, a graphic designer from Montreal (that’s in Canada, Mr. O’Reilly), sets up a small shack in which he lives until Christmas Day, selling trees that he grows and trucks to New York. And he donates 10 percent of the proceeds from his sales to the church, which is very Christian of him.
But not this year. According to the “New York Times,” (article linked below), on route to New York with a load of trees, he was stopped in Beecher Falls, Vermont by U.S. Customs agents who told him, as they forced him to turn back, that he was “doing jobs that U.S. citizens could do.” (Danny, by the way, always hired New Yorkers who are citizens to work for him. Which apparently is more than what Mitt Romney appeared to do.)
I can see how non-Americans are taking lettuce-picking jobs away from red-blooded citizens and how others are cornering the market on the most desirable dishwashing work, but if I have to find some other place to get my Christmas tree, in protest I’m not shopping in JCPenny anymore and will certainly not be watching “The Factor” (whatever that means) on Fox.
Forget for the moment that I'm Jewish. In this Christian Nation even Jews celebrate Christmas-- any excuse to shop—and although we have been labeled Christ Killers, we take pleasure in reminding those who accuse us of this that (1) he was Jewish after all; and (2) didn’t he have to be killed in order to be resurrected?
So I’m OK with the “Merry Christmas.” And I’m also OK that this annual crusade of O’Reilly’s makes him look like a nut. Which is a good thing since he is a nut.
But I not OK with something else he indirectly had a hand in messing with—he and others who unrelentingly rail about how our porous borders allow illegal immigrants to sneak into our country as well as contribute to the outsourcing of large segments of our economy (porousness, you see, works in both directions) these cranks have created a Christmas tree crisis. And how can we celebrate Christmas in the manner O'Reilly would require us to do if a large part of our supply—trees from Canada—are being turned away at our northern border?
Allow me to make this personal.
In New York City, down by St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, on Second Avenue at 10th Street, for as long as we have lived in the neighborhood, every year on the stroke of December 1st, one Daniel Lemay, a graphic designer from Montreal (that’s in Canada, Mr. O’Reilly), sets up a small shack in which he lives until Christmas Day, selling trees that he grows and trucks to New York. And he donates 10 percent of the proceeds from his sales to the church, which is very Christian of him.
But not this year. According to the “New York Times,” (article linked below), on route to New York with a load of trees, he was stopped in Beecher Falls, Vermont by U.S. Customs agents who told him, as they forced him to turn back, that he was “doing jobs that U.S. citizens could do.” (Danny, by the way, always hired New Yorkers who are citizens to work for him. Which apparently is more than what Mitt Romney appeared to do.)
I can see how non-Americans are taking lettuce-picking jobs away from red-blooded citizens and how others are cornering the market on the most desirable dishwashing work, but if I have to find some other place to get my Christmas tree, in protest I’m not shopping in JCPenny anymore and will certainly not be watching “The Factor” (whatever that means) on Fox.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:17 PM
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