MSNBC, the station that had employed a host that suggested someone should urinate and defecate in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s mouth, blasted Palin on Thursday for having a Christmas tree in her home on Christmas.
In a segment that was stranger than fiction on The Ed Show, guest-host Joy Reid claimed Palin was going against the Bible by displaying a Christmas tree in her home when she was interviewed for a Fox & Friends Christmas special.
“Certain parts of the Bible also appear to preach against let’s say, I don’t know, Christmas trees,” Reid said, according to a Newsbusters transcript.
Reid then read Jeremiah 10-10, thinking she was indicting Palin in a game of “gotcha”:
“For the practices of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. Like a scare crow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.”
“Now, a Christmas purist wouldn’t want to stray from the Bible on Christmas, would she?” Reid said.
As Newsbusters noted, though, authorities on the Bible have pointed out that “nothing can be further from the truth” since Jeremiah does not mention Christmas trees, and the trees in the verse that Reid mentioned are cut down to to be turned into worthless idols, which is what the verse warns against.
BillyGraham.Org also says that the verses in question “do not apply to Christmas trees,” but rather “condemn the idolatry practiced in Jeremiah’s day. God’s people were following the customs of the heathen who cut down trees, shaped the wood into idols, decorated them with silver and gold ornaments, and worshiped them as gods.”
“It is important that we keep Christ central and our worship of Him unhindered in our observance of Christmas. However, we do not believe it is unbiblical to have a Christmas tree lighted and decorated in the home or the church,” BillyGraham.org states. “It has been suggested that the branches of the tree pointing upward can signify praise to God. The star at the top can represent the star of Bethlehem. Also, the green of the evergreens has been recognized as symbolic of eternal life, God’s gift to us through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is yet another example of the “war on Christmas” that Palin discusses in her best-selling book, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas. Palin has emphasized that the war on Christmas is the tip of the spear in a greater battle against American exceptionalism that threatens to fundamentally transform the country.
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