Earlier: The ECONOMIST Joins The War On Christmas In America, While Denying It Exists.
The annual Economist Christmas Double Issue is out. Part of the British "Boxing Day" phenomenon (which as Mark Steyn keeps reminding us, can keep British media organizations moving very slowly until mid-January) is the Economist's traditional "Christmas Double Issue," designed to get the staff of a weekly magazine a week off during the British drinking season.
However, if you subscribe to the version printed in America, or if click through from a U.S. or Canada IP address, you'll find that it's the "traditional" holiday double issue:
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And just as the Economist denied the War on Christmas in 2017 [Despite Donald Trump’s best efforts, Americans are relaxed about generic holiday greetings, by Erasmus, December 20, 2017], this year they've come up with another doozy:
America’s Christmas wars—Knock yourself out, Fox: Americans have vied over Christmas for centuries, by Lexington, December 18, 2021.
The war on Christmas that has dominated coverage on Fox News is imagined nonsense and conservative pay-dirt
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 17, 2021
https://t.co/ZWtaFP1Dge
The pseudonymous Lexington writes
HAVING SPENT almost two decades ballyhooing a non-existent “War on Christmas”, Fox News received the best present imaginable in the first week of Advent. A homeless man called Craig Tamanaha, while stumbling around Manhattan late one night, came across the 50-foot-high “All American Christmas Tree” in Fox Square. Mr Tamanaha climbed it, allegedly flicked his lighter, and the tree-like installation went up with a whoosh.
It seems the suspected arsonist was not in his perfect mind. Mr Tamanaha had earlier exposed himself to journalists outside the courthouse where Ghislaine Maxwell is on trial. Yet for Fox, his vandalism represented the war its anchors had spent so long trying to talk into existence. “Torching Christmas trees is an attack on Christianity!” wailed Tucker Carlson. [More, for subscribers.]
The Economist is trying to convince people there is no War on Christmas—while fighting in it, but on the other side.
