Europe’s Choice for Christmas: Pink Trees or None at All
From the desk of Paul Belien on Tue, 2008-12-23 19:08
Be prepared for a homosexual parody of Christmas when you take a stroll through Amsterdam these days. The Dutch city, the self-declared “gay capital of the world,” is holding its first “Pink Christmas Festival.”
From 18 until 28 December there is a ten-day “Christmas Festival” for homosexuals, including a “gay X-mas open-air market”, gay nativity scenes – featuring Baby Jesus with either two Josephs or two Marys – several gay gatherings, a “pink ice skating rink” (for travestites), and streets lined with pink Christmas trees.
The organizers, who also organize the Amsterdam Gay Pride Parade each August, say they want to “increase the range of options for homosexual men and women during Christmas week when there is not much to do.” They intend to turn the event into an annual Pink Christmas Festival and expect that in the long run Pink Christmas will become even more popular than the August Gay Pride Parade, a floating Parade on barges and boats through the famous Amsterdam canals.
The Dutch Calvinist merchants, who built the canals in the 17th century to provide easy access to their warehouses, could never have imagined that their spoilt, affluent offspring would turn the city, which they made into the commercial hub and the capitalist center of the world, into the world’s showpiece of depravity. Today’s Amsterdammers hold nothing sacred of what their ancestors cared for, except money.
Pink Christmas, the organizers say, is also an attempt to “reclaim Amsterdam for gays” and to counter the rising intolerance in the city. Over the past years, assaults on homosexuals have occurred with increasing frequency. Though the parades, parties and festivals continue, homosexual couples who venture into the streets risk being beaten up or thrown into one of the canals.
While the homosexuals make a parody of Christmas, mocking the Christians with an open show of blasphemy during the holy season, it is not the Christians whom the homosexuals fear. Those who pretend that “religious people” are intolerant will find few examples among the remaining followers of Christ in Holland. The attacks on homosexuals are perpetrated by Muslim youths. The growing presence of Islam in the Dutch capital, which is already almost 20 per cent Muslim, has made life in the city less gay than it used to be.
Europe’s Christians, however, would be naïve to expect that the Muslims will have greater respect for Christmas nativity scenes. Radical Islamists want to ban them altogether. In an interview earlier this year Belgium’s Cardinal Godfried Danneels said that Christians may thank Muslims for the growing respect for God in present-day Europe, but the liberal Cardinal does not seem to understand that the God of Islam is not the God of Christianity.
In Antwerp, in Danneels’ own Belgium, the city authorities have decreed that public shools, even during the Christmas season, have to avoid all references to Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The authorities do not want to upset the schools’ large population of Muslim kids. “Christmas should be a neutral event, not focused on one particular religion, but on enjoying food and drink together with friends and family,” the city officials wrote in a letter to the schools.
Even Christmas trees have been banned in Antwerp’s public schools. Last year a Muslim civil servant and trade union representative demanded that the city show “its commitment to complete neutrality by banning Christmas trees and Easter eggs” from public buildings and spaces. Christmas carols are not allowed as background music, let alone to be sung, during Antwerp’s traditional open-air Christmas market.
Like Amsterdam, Antwerp still tolerates the word “Christmas,” though. In Oxford, England, the city council has decided to ban the C-word and replace it with the term “Winter Light Festival.” This is done in order “to include all religious denominations.”
Meanwhile, Oxford University Press has removed other words associated with Christianity and British history from Britain’s leading dictionary for children, the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Words like “bishop,” “chapel,” “abbey,” “saint,” “monarch” and “empire” have been axed. The publisher claims the changes are made to “reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.”
What multifaith means was experienced by the non-Muslim children of a junior school in Nottingham which cancelled the traditional Christmas nativity play because it got in the way of the Muslim children celebrating the Islamic Eid festivities.
In Sarajevo, Bosnia, Christmas has been abolished in all the city’s kindergarten institutions. In order not to offend Muslims, even Christmas trees have been banned from the kindergarten premises. 43 percent of Bosnians are Muslims.
In Cologne, Germany, the windows of the Galeria Kaufhof department store no longer display traditional Christmas scenes. Instead, passers-by can marvel at Islamic scenes of mosques with minarets, desert abodes and puppets dressed like Arabs, including veiled women. Over 30% of Cologne’s inhabitants are Muslims.
In Europe, the war against Christmas is being waged on all fronts, with the institution under attack from two sides: from secularist fundamentalists, who turn it into a mockery with two Josephs (or two Marys) amidst pink Christmas trees, and from Muslim fundamentalists who tolerate no nativity scenes and no Christmas trees at all.
It is time for all men of good will to raise their banners and fight: for the family and the right of child to live and to be raised – like Jesus – by a father and a mother, instead of two fathers or two mothers; for green Christmas trees; for words and concepts like Christmas, bishop, chapel, abbey, monarch and empire; in short, for God, sanity and tradition.
This article was first published at Takimag.
@Akira (and P. Belien)
Submitted by Sagunto on Wed, 2008-12-24 22:38.
"..Past generations of Amsterdamers didn't make a fetish of a queer Holy
Family.."
I know @Akira, and I'm glad they didn't. Same goes for today's Amsterdammers. Everybody in Amsterdam knows what a sad little bunch this "ProGay" org. really is, and what little support they have among the general public, and that includes the majority of gays in Amsterdam. The "chairman" was ousted from his job at another gay org. (confict of interests etc.), so his tainted reputation is well known.
I'll translate one typical comment by someone who is a regular in the Amsterdam gay scene, just to provide an indication of the indignation, even among gays:
"..‘Pink Christmas' is of course presented as if it was a party, but in the gay community there's a rather strong resentment against it. At gay-sites a majority judges such stereotypical presentation by gays to be completely unwarranted and even stigmatizing. Many find it inappropriate to link it to Christmas.."
I know that Mr. Belien doesn't need a translation of the following article in Dutch, so here's some extra info, especially in the comments below the article.
I'll summarize them shortly for non-Dutch readers: overwhelmingly negative comments about this so-called "festival", many also by gays themselves who are offended by this "Pink Christmas" act.
So there you go. "Today's Amsterdammers hold nothing sacred.." versus a small sample (from a large pool) of Dutch realism. Perhaps it won't do, and of course I'm aware that Amsterdam will keep the image it already has for centuries now, but that's all right. The city will always provide the needy from abroad with some instant shock value and decadent "couleur locale".
Yet, my point is plain and simple. A good article like this doesn't need blanket statements about today's and yesteryear's Amsterdammers in order to convince. The suggestion (well, more than mere suggestion actually) that with this sordid publicity stunt, these rogue Pinkos would somehow represent "Amsterdam", the "Amsterdammers" or even the gay scene in Amsterdam, is more than just a bit over the top. Besides all that, the focus needs to be on the struggle against Islam, which (I repeat it for the odd reader) is a brand new phenomenon on our canals and perhaps a tad bit more menacing than a few queer extremists in drags.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Fighting back is the KEY
Submitted by truth serum on Wed, 2008-12-24 15:21.
"It is time for all men of good will to raise their banners and fight."
Fight not with banners but with lawyers. Pure and simple...many of these institutions are discriminating in favor of other faiths or no faith at all.
Use their own methods against them. It works.
In America...more and more Christians are fighting back for the secularists/Islamists are waging the same kind of war. We have the Alliance Defense Fund, which is a group of lawyers dedicated to taking up these kinds of fights. For instance....
Modern 'David' defeats New York 'Goliath'
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84441
The important thing is...do not just sit back and watch it happen...feeling helpless. You have an option.
FIGHT for you traditions, your values and your country.
Amsterdam, cesspool of impurity..
Submitted by Sagunto on Wed, 2008-12-24 01:53.
Excellent article, though one remark about the people of Amsterdam might qualify for cardboard cliché of the year:
"..The Dutch Calvinist merchants, who built the canals in the 17th century to provide easy access to their warehouses, could never have imagined that their spoilt, affluent offspring would turn the city, which they made into the commercial hub and the capitalist center of the world, into the world’s showpiece of depravity. Today’s Amsterdammers hold nothing sacred.." et cetera.
Two clichés in fact:
- The Dutch as affluent Calvinists, and
- Amsterdam as a modern showpiece of depravity
The suggestion actually seems that in days past, when those 17th C. Calvinists held sway over the city, it was all nice and clean warehouses and commerce. Well yes, a lot of commerce allright, plenty of sailors too, from around the world. In short: already from the late Middle Ages, Amsterdam enjoyed an international reputation (apart from being an important centre of pilgrimage) for being the most famous city of prostitution. Tourists in those days came for the same things as most of today's: prostitution and gambling halls. That is not to say that it wasn't considered a problem by many in Amsterdam, as it is today.
And for the other cliché: calvinism. Dutch calvinism and blanket statements about it, without any clue what impact this doctrine actually had on actual people in the Netherlands. For starters: in the 17th century, at least 45% of the populace in the Northern Netherlands (the Republic) was still Roman Catholic, and speaking of Amsterdam: when radical Calvinists (never more then 10% of the population) blocked Antwerp, the Catholic merchants fled to, yep.. Amsterdam and helped it to bloom, in spite of some Calvinist fanatics who would have closed down the whole economy, if they'd got their way.
Anyway.
Amsterdam as the fount of European depravity.. and therefore visited by countless tourists. From the Dutch Golden Age, right up 'til today. What else is new? Surely not the clichés or the historical inaccuracies.
Well, Islam unfortunately, is brand new in Amsterdam. That's where the real challenge lies. Not in age-old "depravity" that, in Amsterdam at least is (and was) clearly visible.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Barbarians
Submitted by KO on Wed, 2008-12-24 06:26.
Moslems, gay libbers, dhimmi secularists--barbarians all!
Christian terms and MONARCHY axed from leftist dictionary!
Submitted by Monarchist on Tue, 2008-12-23 23:39.
Meanwhile, Oxford University Press has removed other words associated
with Christianity and British history from Britain’s leading dictionary
for children, the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Words like “bishop,”
“chapel,” “abbey,” “saint,” “monarch” and “empire” have been axed. The publisher claims the changes are made to “reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.”
Leftist dislike of religion is well known. Conservatives should understand that the left hate monarchy at least to the same extend. What is more they know that monarchy and Christianity have long history of being inseparable. They realize that restoration of Catholic monarchies is the worst thing that could possibly happen to their efforts. Thus they push so much for democracy (of course as long as they need it to gain power, while this is always final effect of democracy). Thus they push so much for multiculturalism.