Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) called Democrats’ push to force through an arms control treaty and an omnibus spending bill right before Christmas “sacrilegious,” and warned he’d draw the process out to wage his objections.
“You can’t jam a major arms control treaty right before Christmas,” he told POLITICO. “What’s going on here is just wrong. This is the most sacred holiday for Christians. They did the same thing last year – they kept everybody here until (Christmas Eve) to force something down everybody’s throat. I think Americans are sick of this.”
Wait, what? As Matt Yglesias says via Twitter, “I’m Jewish and even I know Easter, not Christmas, is the most sacred holiday for Christians.” How on earth do you get to be an adult church-goer and not understand this?
Even if DeMint were right, there’s nothing sacrilegious about pushing work right up to Christmas Eve. At least, they didn’t teach me about any “zone of protection” in the week before Christmas. And look, Christian holidays are not like the Jewish sabbath. Catholics and Orthodox Christians are under obligation to attend church, but there’s no prohibition on doing work that day. Protestants don’t even get that much structure. It’s a cultural tradition to take the day off to be with your family, but there’s nothing intrinsically religious about it, no books of I & II Christmas to tell us how to mark the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(Wait, better double-check that. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John…Timothy, Titus…Revelation. Nope. No books about Christmas in my Bible, anyway.)
And it just gets weirder from there:
Reid took to the floor Wednesday afternoon and defended jamming through a packed lame-duck agenda in the final days of the session, blaming Republicans for stalling legislative business throughout the year.
“As a Christian, no one has to remind me of the importance of Christmas for all of the Christian faith, all their families across America,” he said. “I don’t need to hear the sanctimonious lectures of Sens. Kyl and DeMint to remind me of what Christmas means.”
Catch that? Harry Reid, the Mormon Democrat from Nevada, tells Kyl and DeMint to cram it, basically. Now I have seen everything. It’s like Christmas, ten days early!
