Christmas is Social Justice?

Anti-imperialismWarGenocideRacismPatriarchyChild abuse

Dec 6

Originally published in my Facebook post Dec 3 2021. Republished with edits here.

This is what people in the social justice community are telling each other about Christmas:

Image description: Tweet from Carlos A. Rodriguez. Text is in white on a black background. Tweet has 851 retweets and 3,015 likes at the bottom. Tweet reads: “Christmas is about believing what a woman said about her sex life. Christmas is about a family seeking safety as asylum seekers. Christmas is about a child in need receiving support from the wealthy. Christmas is about God identifying with the marginalized, not the powerful.”

I mean, you can make all of these excuses but Christmas is actually about an imperialist empire genociding Indigenous peoples and forcing monotheist extremist patriarchy on them in order to take their land and control their bodies. As a result, millions have died AND CONTINUE TO DIE, temples were/are wiped out, Indigenous philosophies and spiritualities have been wiped out, children were/are abducted and exploited, women - particularly Indigenous women including Black Indigenous women - suffer relentless violence, Queer and Trans people have been oppressed in the most extreme ways. All so that the Christian empire can dominate and control the planet and make LOTS OF MONEY.

There's a reason why Christianity is the richest religion in the world. There's a reason why Christianity is the biggest religion in the planet. There's a reason why Christian churches all over the world are major landowners of Native land. AND IT ISN'T BECAUSE ALL THOSE PEOPLE WHO NEVER HEARD OF PALESTINE DECIDED TO BELIEVE THAT SOME RANDOM THE ROMAN EMPIRE EXECUTED 2,000 YEARS AGO WAS GOD.

So please shut up about how "Christmas" is about social justice issues.

Even if you believe in the "Jesus" you've all be indoctrinated into, do you really think he'd be ok with his birthday celebrated on Dec 25th which wasn't even the time the original Christians said he was born (April), during the Pagan winter festival (Roman festival of Saturnalia), on stolen Indigenous land (anywhere not Rome is stolen Indigenous land), cutting down native European trees that used to be worshipped, and all to give each other totally useless gifts that send all the money straight to the 1%? And then do you think he would agree that you use all of that to pretend like "his birthday" is about women's rights and immigration justice?

Just stop with that.

It never ceases to amaze me how the social justice community will gaslight even itself.

You are using the masters tools to prop up the master's house. WAKE UP.

Screenshot. Image description: Map of the world on a white background with different colors for the countries according to religion. A color key in the bottom left explains the colors. Christianity dominates the planet with blue all over the Americas, Greenland, half of Africa, almost all of Europe, most of Russia, Australia, New Zealand and small Island nations. Islam dominates the most next with dark brown all over North Africa, the Middle East, Persia, and central Asia. Buddhism with yellow dominates east Asian countries of Tibet, half of China, Japan, etc. The other half of China is shown as Traditional Chinese with orange. India and Nepal are Hindu with light brown. Non-religious countries are shown with grey and are three small European countries. Israel is shown as Jewish with maroon. Strangely, there is another category called “Indigenous” that is in green, and shows very small areas in south East Asia, ignoring that Hinduism is Indigenous, Traditional Chinese is Indigenous, and Judaism is Indigenous. Small color coded pie charts at the bottom show the percentages of religions in Latin America, North America, Europe (all Christianity dominated), Africa (almost even split between Christianity and Islam with a small predominance of Indigenous), and Asia which is mixed (Islam, Hinduism, Traditional Chinese, Buddhism, non-religious, “Indigenous”, and Christianity).

PS: The capitalist empire wouldn't survive without Christmas. Until Christmas shopping, all these western corporations are in the red, meaning that they are not profitable. That's why these days Black Friday is called “Black Friday” (originally there were other reasons for the name). From the 1980s onwards the term Black Friday has referred to when tradition Christmas shopping begins, and all that shopping for useless Christmas presents moves the corporations from being in the red (ie. not profitable) to being in the black (ie. they do make profit).