“Happy Mistletoe!”: It’s State Street’s secular way of commercializing Christmas without referring to the source of the Feast

Today all the lampposts on State Street have the same fluttering flags reading “Happy Mistletoe!” from something called the State Street Alliance, which is a front group for the State Street Council. You know what I’d wish you do? Call the State Street Council, use a fake name and prestigious title like “George J. Rogers, president of All State, Incorporated,” or “ Dorothy Spellman, president of Mid-Continent, Incorporated”—ask to speak to the executive director and when he comes on the line say two words which will send him into cardiac arrest:

“Jesus Christ!”

When he says “what? I beg your pardon?” tell him that the name of the holiday his group is avoiding has to do with the birth of Jesus Christ whom Christianity reveres as the Second Person of the Trinity.

If he’s still on the phone and able to listen, say: “You know, I’m personally offended by your group capitalizing on Christmas, seeking to gain profit from the holiest day in the Christian calendar while refusing to credit the religious source of the day. This goofy stuff of `Happy Mistletoe!’ is a cowardly dodge in order to avoid mention of the day—a dodge not to placate the religious sensibilities of Jews because they recognize the day as part of the Judeo-Christian heritage—but because your association wants to squeeze profit out of the feast day, filling your pockets with largesse from it, while refusing to provide the religious credit it deserves. Do you know what that makes you? You’re a deadbeat—who takes benefit without payment of price…in the same way I would be if I bought something from one of your stores with a credit card and skipped without paying the price. You’re a deadbeat. My advice to you is to get some backbone, appreciate the religious significance of the feast you’re filling your pockets on, and at least have the common decency of facing up to the responsibility of giving it its proper name—you deadbeat!”

You should use a fake name because unless you manufacture a phony association you’ll be referred to a poor telephone operator who had nothing to do with selection of “Happy Mistletoe!” in the first place. This idea that it is profitable to erase the religious significance of Christmas as deference to Jewish sensibilities is thoroughly unjust to Jewish concerns, using Judaism as a shield behind which these abject secularists cringe. The real Christmas is not referred to by the commercial interests is not toleration for other religions—it is a thorough-going attempt to strip any mention of the Deity from our heritage. This commercialization in Chicago smacks of Daley-ism, the don’t-mention-it strategy that this arrogant mayor has made of his own cowardice and refusal to face the music in so many ways: like the pathetic scowl and childish reference he enunciated to the media the other day when he sought to capitalize on a ribbon-cutting event. The press was invited but when they asked him about the latest indictment from his administration, his only words were: “Jeeze!” It meant: don’t bother me with that now while I’m conning you to cover my event. Jeeze is a school-kid’s immature reference to Jesus.

Oh yes, and when the State Street Council guy tries to object, tell him (and it should be him because the Council is male directed) to kiss your mistletoe.