Long Live Christmas!
By Natalie Schultz

Screw you, Macy’s! You hypocritical corporate destroyer of family values. You owe your success to the Christmas classic “Miracle on 34th Street.” And now your parent company, Federated Department Stores, has joined the wave of politically correct anti-Christmas crusaders. No more saying “Merry Christmas” you say? Well, I say no more Christmas shopping in your stores!

Natalie Wood is turning over in her grave – she and Santa Claus gave America something to believe in. A Miracle of Christmas, celebrated at Macy’s department store, no less. And now you tell all of us Christians that we are not worthy of true Christmas cheer? That we are merely zombie shoppers helping increase corporate profits by sharing in secular joy? Well, you can shove your secular tinsel-covered “holiday tree” up your politically correct butt!

This whole anti-Christmas, anti-Christianity crusade has gotten way out of hand. Public schools all over the country have passed insane rules ranging from no Christmas trees or Christmas songs or nativity scenes, even to prohibiting teachers from wearing Christmas pins or Christmas sweaters. Now, don’t get me wrong, holiday sweaters are at the top of the fashion crime list; but to call in “What Not to Wear” would be more egalitarian than banning such adornment altogether. But, truthfully, all this political correctness only hurts the children of our future. These poor children lose the values and history of their past that their parents were able to embrace and celebrate. When I think back on my days in elementary school, I don’t recall learning my ABC’s and 123’s as much as I recall the Easter egg hunts, the Christmas plays (I played Mary Mary Quite Contrary), and dressing up like a pilgrim on Thanksgiving (today that would be akin to dressing like Charles Manson). But everyone in my school happily participated in these festivities; to dress up like pilgrims and Indians wasn’t politically incorrect, and it didn’t prevent us from learning about the truth about the wars and violence of the history between the settlers and Native Americans.

But what Federated has done affects me on a personal note. You see, my parents named me Natalie for two reasons: 1) My father loved Natalie Wood, and 2) I was ever so lucky to be born on Christmas Eve, and Natalie means “Child of Christmas.” My whole life I have never been allowed to celebrate my birthday on my actual birthday like a normal kid. No, I always had to dress up and go to my Grandparents house and eat fish, and then spend the rest of the night in the back of the standing-room only church during Midnight Mass.

So, Macy’s, I have you to thank for introducing the world to Natalie Wood, and saving me from being named Pamela. But you still deserve to burn in Hell for profiting from the joy of Christmas and then knocking us Christians down in the over-crowded parking lot for our beliefs.

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