Now that we are rolling into November, with Thanksgiving and Christmas just weeks away, I thought I’d wish everybody a warm and heartfelt “Happy Holidays!”
Wait sorry, hope I didn’t offend you with that statement. I just remembered that when it gets cold outside, that’s when America’s annual War on Christmas heats up.
And War on Christmas lovers have much to rejoice this holiday, I mean Christmas, season.
That’s because Sarah Palin’s got a new book in which she blasts away at the godless “Happy Holidays” crowd and urges us to “ignore the politically correct Scrooges who would rather take Christ out of Christmas.”
So rest easy, Jesus, Sarah’s got your back. Her new book — hailed by some as “the Bible of all War on Christmas manuals” — is titled “Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas.”
Living up there near the North Pole, the former Alaska governor knows how much Santa hates it when people say “Happy Holidays.” It’s like he dies a little bit inside every time.
Interesting that she also laments the commercialized aspects of Christmas in a book intended to get those cash register bells jingling this holiday, I mean Christmas, shopping season.
But, hey, the manger is in danger and Sarah is sounding the alarm. For, as I reported last year at this time, the Christmas haters are surely stocking their arsenals with crude homemade tannen-bombs and Intercontinental Ballistic Mistletoe. And Sarah is boldly drawing a line in the snow.
If you detect a pinch of mockery in the words above, congratulations! You’re now in the running for a chance to win an all-expenses-paid reindeer sleigh ride from Wasilla, Alaska, to Vladimir Putin’s house just across the Bering Strait.
Really though, you might be asking yourself, what kind of moron would waste a single minute of his life writing about Sarah Palin (whose 15 minutes of fame now clocks in at an estimated 2.73 million minutes and counting)?
Sadly, in the interest of full disclosure, I must reveal that back in the summer of 2010, when Palin was at the pinnacle of her popularity, some of my Sarah satire drew the attention of a book packager who proposed that I write a Palin parody timed to coincide with the November release of her second bestseller, “America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag.”
Perhaps due to bias in the elite, liberal publishing industry, the book did not sell. (See the pitch here.) But my research yielded some exclusive, heretofore unreported details about the woman who once stood like three winks and a couple “you betchas” away from the presidency
Baby Sarah was born Feb. 11, 1964, in a nondescript manger in Sandpoint, Idaho, but moved to Alaska just six weeks later when her parents fled the Gem State to escape the ever-present threat of socialism.
Sarah’s first word was either “moof” (moose) or “mavwick” (maverick) and she enjoyed an idyllic Alaska upbringing — learning to catch salmon with her powerful jaws and blowing away her first moose at age 5.
In high school, her competitive spirit as a basketball point guard earned her the nicknames “Sarah Barracuda” and “Sarah Piranha.” Ex-teammates say she would do whatever it took to win — even if it meant confusing a stronger opponent by calling her a Muslim or accusing her of hating Alaska.
Flash forward to September 2008. Desperate to juice up his flagging campaign against that whippersnapper Obama, GOP nominee John McCain went rogue.
In a now-surreal act of political cunning, McCain busted out his stunning new running mate — the eye-catching Alaska governor, a real American frontierswoman who seemed to ooze patriotism and family values from every pore.
While that hopey-changey Obama jerk was yapping about bringing people together, she was on him like a pit bull on baby seal — ripping the future president for “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
The politically green, ex-beauty queen’s winks and smiles made compelling video, but the audio was often gibberish. And soon it was hard to tell the difference between the real Sarah Palin and Tina Fey’s “Saturday Night Live” portrayal of her as a gorgeous igloo-ramus.
Supporters loved the conserve-a-licious homespun hottie with her curvy straight talk. Critics dissed her as a dizzy diva, dangerously unqualified to run the country.
Today there are true believers who still think she should run for president. Sure, she quit her job as governor, but supporters of a 2016 White House bid point out that she hates all the right things and is passionate about the God-given right of every fetus to own a gun.
But adore or abhor her, it is hard to ignore her.
Better, I think, to learn from her. With her innate emphasis on ignorance over substance, she has arguably been a vital and influential force in shaping the current state of our duh-mocracy — a shining example of how some of the most prominent figures in our political world are hypocritical opportunists aiming to hurt, rather than help, their fellow man.
Perhaps you’re the type who understands — amid the cultural and religious melting pot that makes America great — why some merchants might choose to say “Happy Holidays.”
Hopefully those words, intended to express something positive and friendly, do not strike you as subversive, hostile and threatening.
For me, I’ll say Merry Christmas whenever I feel like it (definitely not till mid-December), but never as a holier-than-thou taunt intended to lord it over the less enlightened. And on that note …
Happy Holidays!
— John Breneman