Patheos has put together an interesting breakdown of a few dispatches from the War on Christmas put together by Todd Starnes, a Fox News commentator. Of late, Starnes has taken our nation’s VA services to task, accusing them of banning religious-themed Christmas cards and forbidding a children’s choir from singing religious-themed Christmas carols. These are serious charges, and Starnes seemed to dig up statements from the VA that supported his accusations. What Patheos found was that, in both instances, Mr. Starnes blew things a little out of proportion. The VA did not ban religious-themed Christmas cards—they only said that such cards would only be offered to patients who wanted them. Likewise, they did not ban religious carols from the hospital—they asked the children’s choir to perform them in a chapel, away from the public space. They made this perfectly clear in their public statements—Starnes simply omitted those points when he quoted them.
To be sure, in the both cases, such precautions seem a touch excessive for a service already stretched to the breaking point. But, as the article states, “Starnes’ lies actually distract us from those conversations. Instead, we are off tilting at the ghosts of persecution windmills” …
