The Big Picture – 

By Glynn Wilson – 

If only the Arab King of the Jews who was never really a king, Herod Antipas, had built a border wall around Jerusalem with the help of the Romans, we might not be celebrating Christmas at all. What a different, glorious world it would be.

If only he had kept that migrant family from Bethlehem — Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus — out of the city and maybe cut taxes so there would have been no reason for people to travel to pay their taxes, there might not have ever been a religion called Christianity and no Christmas to celebrate at all.

We would just be celebrating another Pagan holiday around the winter solstice and the end of the year.

Think of the possibilities. We could all be dancing naked around a campfire by a river celebrating the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite, and loving each other because it is human, not because The Bible says so.

Of course it is a very different thing to say so, than to do so. Just watch the behavior of the fundamentalist Southern Baptists of Alabama, who still support one of the most immoral men to ever accidentally find himself in the White House.

Is that why President Donald J. Trump, who clearly sees himself as a mob boss dictator king of his time, is threatening to hand American families such a great set of gifts for Christmas this year?

A government shut down to force Congress to give him the money to build a border wall, and repeal of the Affordable Care Act to take away the health care coverage of average and poor working people?

What a nice little story to tell your kids and grandkids on Christmas Eve 2018 if you are a white nationalist Christian Republican.

“Yes, Johny and Sarah, our great president is protecting us from those horrible, criminal Mexicans this Christmas,” dad might say over Christmas dinner.

“Thank you Jesus,” the prayer might go, “for our great white leader who is making the evil Democrats pay for the wall and cutting our taxes again. Also thank you for the Republican judge in Texas who is taking away our health care coverage. We don’t need the government to tell us we are not healthy and to pay for our insurance. We can pay Blue Cross Blue Shield more money than we pay for our house and be just fine

“And thank you Jesus for the brave police department in Hoover Alabama for shooting that armed black man in the back in the Galleria Mall. He may not have been the one to do the shooting, but he had to be up to no good.”

Now that is such a great little Christmas story, don’t you think?

How sweet it is, in the land where fake news is worshipped as the new truth. We don’t have to abide pesky facts anymore. We will settle for a myth every time.

Now I know we’re going to get some comments from Christian Right trolls (which we will not publish) who will say things like: “What do you mean King Herod was not a king? Or a Jew? He was King of the Jews. It’s right there in The Holy Bible.”

Well, that’s not quite right. I won’t bore you with links to real historians writing about this. Just Google “King Harod.” You will find many Christian publications writing about this in the 10 million 900 thousand links that come up in the Google internet search engine trash heap.

Google “the true meaning of Christmas” and you get 348 million results, most of it complete junk not worth archiving anywhere, must less available for people to find and read in a search engine.

According to the number one result from Wikipedia, the “true meaning of Christmas” is a phrase that began to appear in the mid-19th century when a shift toward a more secular culture resulted in a national backlash. Christians began to see the secularization of the celebration day of the birth of Christ as the shift toward Santa and gift exchanging replaced the celebration of the advent of Christ, along with the tradition of giving to the poor and needy without expectation of anything in return.

Of course today’s Christians have forgotten all about that. Christianity today is so intertwined with capitalism that no one even bothers to comment anymore on the contradiction of the Christian tradition and the capitalist one. They are all one and the same thing now.

So Jesus was born on the same night that Santa Claus comes down the chimney and eats your cookies and drinks your milk. Only after leaving off a few gifts under a plastic tree or one cut down in a Christmas tree forest only to be thrown to the curb with all the other garbage afterward.

What’s the message here? Trees are garbage. No wonder no one cares about the environmental anymore, and vote for politicians who deny the very existence of weather records that show the climate changing due to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels.

One prediction from the so-called prophets of old might well come true one of these days. The end of the world.

Will that make Trump and his Christian followers happy? They get to live through the flood and the fire foretold in the stories of old. Then the story will actually come true.

Philosophers call this a self-fulfilling prophesy. But in this day and time, no one cares about all that. People just want to see the latest reality show.

Bring it on, baby. Let’s all burn in hell and take selfies of ourselves with our cell phones going down in flames or waves.

If there is a real god up there somewhere, I don’t think he will lift a hand to save any of us. Certainly not a bunch of racists who call themselves Christians who supported Trump for president and stick with him to the bitter end.

I’ve got news for you. Trump is going down, one way or another.

Merry Christmas indeed.

At least you can get your coffee in a Starbucks Christmas cup. Are you happy now?