NOTE: PLEASE say if you DON'T want your name and/or email address published when sending VDARE email.

01/14/10 - A Rhode Island Reader Has The Solution To Ending Visa Overstayer Fraud

From: Ronald Kyser (e-mail him)

Re: War Against Christmas, 2009

VDARE.COM contributors enjoy pointing out the most blatant salvos in the War Against Christmas. It may be more important, though, to catch the most subtle.

For many Christmastides, travelers who arrived at our Midwestern airport, and the locals who picked them up, could bask in an aura of quiet reinforcement of the reason for the season while waiting for their bags to drop at the carousel.

That was because of the selections softly piped through the building over the PA system: We Three Kings, Good King Wenceslas, I Saw Three Ships, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Coventry Carol, What Child Is This, O Come O Come Emanuel, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear and Adeste Fideles

But a year or two ago a change arrived.

Now the traveler is treated to Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Jingle Bells, Here We Come A-Wassailing, The 12 Days of Christmas, Jingle Bells, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, Jingle Bells, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Jingle Bells, Silver Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells...

You might call this "vapid transit."

An airport representative informed me last week that someone objected a few years back, and thus the change, though he gave no details.

Apparently the complainant was offended by some lyrics on the old playlist. Yet they were all instrumentals. Well, with one exception—Handel's Hallelujah Chorus.

But before laughing at some persnicket who takes offense at "King of kings, Lord of lords" (listen here), consider that this person won.

One Christophobe managed to persuade several Christophobophobes [people who fears Christophobes—yes, I made it up!] to deprive millions more of Christophiles of a long-standing tradition of aural depth at their Yuletide baggage-claim reunions.

He thought no-one would notice. And he was right!

Just as disturbing is the fact that this airport doesn't have the usual church/state excuse.

It's run by a quango, and thus receives no operations funding from state or federal income, sales or property taxes.

Indeed, they feel free to give their own workforce—including, presumably, the official who made the decision to change the soundtrack—a luxury almost nobody else in this country gets: a paid Good Friday holiday.

Which way the woodwinds blow in the future will be seen in the fate of the rare overlap in the two playlists: The Holly and the Ivy.

"The holly bears a berry as red as any blood,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
To do poor sinners good"

How did the secularizers miss that one? It must have been the deceptive title!

The Holly and the Ivy may be gone from next year's musical wallpaper. Or it may be rejoined to its brother carols on the earlier, more appropriate playlist.

It's really up to us.

Kyser claims—and we believe him—that he has read every word of each VDARE.COM columnist since the website first hit the internet. His previous letters and articles are archived here.

Peter Brimelow writes: Still struggling with my War On Christmas wrap-up—currently scheduled for Martin Luther King Day!