Peace 122512

Tis the season for no holds barred selling.  In the Christian world the slogan “Peace on earth and good will to men” is used to sell everything from Christmas cards to war.  Beauty contestants parrot world peace as their goal in their pursuit of contest gold. 

While not a bad philosophy the slogan has questionable lineage.  The best guess is it began with some lost biblical copywriter. Since its Greek scribbling the slogan has seen numerous translation errors (or corrections) and tweaking to its present marketing status.  Unfortunately slogans are not are not goals, and pulpits have long been used for the worst abuses of both peace and good will.

Christmas is a particularly good time for some old time pulpit pounding.  Leveraging sentimentalism and loneliness, churches, charities and some outright con men try to shame people into supporting some cause or the other.  If Christmas is so unprincipled and mercenary how did it get that way or was it always of questionable virtue?

Several centuries after the believed birth of Christ a Christian politician co-opted a pagan festival as a way of gaining more followers and incidentally more power.  It was almost a thousand years later before a living nativity was staged (1224ce) again to awe and inspire conversions.  For 22 years (1659-1681) Christmas was banned in Boston, which like most Boston bannings did make the holiday attractive.  Despite fighting a war for peace and good will the holiday was irrelevant to the American Congress that held its first session on December 25, 1789.  The founding fathers were much more dedicated to the people’s business in those days, but almost a hundred year later they declared the date a federal holiday which then stretch into most of a month as the people are left hanging over a fiscal cliff.  Hessian soldiers and German immigrants brought their practice of brightening up winter by decorating evergreens but it was a picture of Queen Victoria‘s 1840 Christmas Tree that built today’s American Christmas tree industry. Victoria’s sexual repressive era sold the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe as safe sex. Washington Irving created the idea that St. Nick could fly in his wagon. Artist Thomas Nast put Santa in a red coat in the late 1800 but it was Coke Cola marketing that made Santa the jolly old gent that became the Christmas icon.  Santa sold Cokes and a red nose reindeer pointed the way to a department store while Frosty the Snowman sold booze.

Christmas really is a Bah Humbug, but it once almost brought peace on earth.   Europe was torn by a war and bible thumpers on all sides declared God was on their side and the fight was to bring peace.  Five months into W.W.I the troops took Christmas peace into their own hands and declared an unofficial truce along the front line, German and British soldiers joined hands in good will among men, until some Christian Generals decided killing was much better for their image and promotions.

Despite the slogan’s failure, it’s a sound philosophy, but the target should be peace and good will everyday not just on the holiday created for marketing.