As the cult of political correctness reaches new levels of ridiculousness, Confederate-related Christmas ornaments are now a target. Yes, you read that right. Christmas ornaments.
According to a Yahoo News article by Nicole Maurantonio, a professor at the University of Richmond, “Confederate Christmas ornaments are smaller than statues – but they send the same racist message.”
Maurantonio criticizes Confederate-themed cookbooks, stuffed animals of Stonewall Jackson’s trusty steed, Little Sorrel, and ornaments depicting such sites as Stone Mountain and the Confederate White House.
“While these keepsakes may seem apolitical, their very circulation enables Confederate myths and symbols to become ‘normal’ features of people’s daily lives,” she writes. “My research suggests they can thus desensitize Americans to the destructive nature of such stories and icons… In that way, seemingly apolitical objects like cookbooks, toys and Christmas ornaments commemorating Confederate history serve to normalize – rather than problematize – the objects, rituals and stories surrounding the Confederacy.”
Maurantonio also complains that “many unexamined Confederate symbols have made their way into people’s kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms” and that “like Confederate statues and flags, Confederate Christmas ornaments strengthen this myth that the Confederacy – an entity built on white supremacy – was about southern ‘heritage.'”
But the Confederacy was about southern heritage. This is not a myth; but the truth. If one truly stopped to examine Confederate symbols, one would realize that they stand for the values of liberty, freedom, individual rights, resistance to authority, and thinking for oneself as opposed to mindlessly conforming to social norms and complying with existing power structures. These things are, in my opinion, awesome, not destructive. Therefore, the Confederacy should be normalized, not problematized. America needs more, not fewer, Confederate symbols in people’s lives. It is the Black Lives Matter movement and the associated attitudes of political correctness that are truly intolerant, racist, and destructive.
“Christmas ornaments communicate something about the person or family that displays them,” Maurantonio writes. “They reveal their history, passions and aesthetic taste. So pause to consider whether your Christmas tree represents your values. Does a keepsake from Stone Mountain really belong between an ornament crafted in a kindergarten classroom and a glass nutcracker gifted by your grandmother?”
Of course it does. The fact that ornaments communicate something about the person who displays them is exactly why Confederate images belong on Christmas trees everywhere. In addition to numerous Confederate toy soldiers, figures, and dolls in a variety of shapes and sizes, I am the proud owner of a Stone Mountain magnet and Breyer horses of both Little Sorrel and Robert E. Lee’s equine companion, Traveller. Additionally, there is a Confederate warrior of sorts on my Christmas tree among the Santas, bows, and bulbs. I wonder what the politically correct mob would say about this ornament…
