Within the next week or so, I will send my stepson to the attic — I am such a wicked stepmother — so that he can haul down our considerably large collection of Christmas decorations. Then he, my husband and our oldest daughter will spend the better part of an afternoon putting up the Christmas lights while I try to put together our Christmas tree with our three younger children underfoot, begging to go outside so that they can get themselves tangled up in the wires (which resemble a diagram of the Internet when laid out on the lawn) and drive their father crazy.

Later that same evening, our family will decorate the Christmas tree while listening to classical and popular Christmas music. We will hang our Christmas stockings on the fireplace mantle and set up our Nativity scene.

I will take the children to our local mall to visit Santa Claus and to the local discount outlet to buy Christmas outfits for them to wear in our family Christmas picture and then to our extended families’ big Christmas party (where we will greet one another with cheerful intonations of “Merry Christmas!”). We will send Christmas cards to our family and friends¹ and we will open our Christmas presents on Christmas morning, after which we will attend the Christmas service at our local church. Finally, after the children have finished using their new toys to make a colossal mess of our living room, we will sit down and eat our Christmas dinner — but not before saying our Christmas prayers.

Our family has been celebrating Christmas this way for a number of years without the ACLU or any other organization getting in our way and this year will be no different because our family still has the right to observe our cultural and religious traditions and ceremonies however we so choose, regardless of the silly and unfounded notion — a Christmas tradition since the late 1950s when America’s courts and retail outlets began to earnestly recognize that not all Americans are Christian — that the ACLU “grinch” wants to steal Christmas.

I’m a card-carrying member of the ACLU and I have no desire whatsoever to stop anyone from celebrating Christmas or any other religious holiday. Our family’s right to mark the birth of Christ in the manner to which we are accustomed does not include some imaginary “right” to impose our beliefs upon the public square, as if we are entitled to preferential treatment simply because a majority of Americans are Christian.²

Our family doesn’t need — or even want — any form of official approval or other special treatment from our local, state or federal governments — and we certainly don’t need such validations from retail merchants and other agents of commerce — to celebrate Christmas in the fashion we prefer. We believe that Christ gave us His guidance regarding the expression of faith in the public square:

5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. 7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. — Matthew 6:5-8 (KJV)

In the last 50 years or so, most of the privileges Christians used to enjoy — and take for granted as a given, particularly the special treatments with regard to Christmas — when Christianity was still considered to be our unofficial state religion have been rightfully and constitutionally rescinded as the result of court decisions on suits brought by the ACLU and other church-state separatist organizations.

Some Christians lament that our progress toward greater religious freedom has caused them to feel marginalized, or even oppressed. Our family will pray that the Lord will shed His grace upon them, that they may have peace and joy instead of wrath and fear this Christmas — as well as the prudence to ignore the hyperbole of the alarmists and fear mongers who wish to exploit their anger and discontent in order to enhance fund raising. And then we will pray for the people in this world who are actually marginalized and oppressed.

Tired of the same old doom and gloom? Are bleak and depressing headlines like, “US soldier, Afghan Killed by Roadside Bomb” and “Jobless Claims Surge, Market Seeks Traction” getting you down?

Then click your world-weary self over to HappyNews.com and discover that the world really isn’t going to hell in a handbasket after all.

HappyNews.com, whose credo is, “Real News, Compelling Stories, Always Positive,” believes that virtue, goodwill and heroism are “hot news.” A diverse team of citizen journalists reports uplifting and inspiring positive news from around the globe. Stories such as “Afghan girl gets chance for healthy life” and “Holiday sales outlook looking brighter” offer the kind of reassurance that we so desperately need in the midst of the calamity and anguish proffered up by our bottom-line-biased, ratings-driven capitalist media and its “if it bleeds, it leads” style of journalism.

While the advent of the 24-hour news cycle expanded the breadth of our understanding of global events, it has also left us all a little unrealistically pessimistic about the present state of the world and its future. An alternate perspective such as the one offered by HappyNews.com serves to remind us that there is good news and hope for the future, after all.

Somewhere in between Halloween and the various other December holidays is my favorite of America’s Q4 celebrations. It is a day when I get up early to cook lots of food, which I hope will be consumed by lots of people so that I do not have to store the leftovers and make my family complain about having to eat recycled food (”It’s good for the environment and okay for you.”)¹ for the next several days.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving. It is one of the few holidays that hasn’t been over-commercialized and over-politicized. It is not a day of greed and covetousness like Halloween or Christmas, but one of gluttony and sloth (except, perhaps, for those of us who have to wash the dishes). Family and friends get together to cook and eat food, share mirth and merriment and watch parades and football — Atlanta Falcons at Detroit Lions (12:30pm, EST) and Denver Broncos at Dallas Cowboys (4:15pm, EST). And, as we enjoy all of these Earthly delights and indulgences, we might even just take the time to count our blessings and find it in our hearts and minds to be grateful for what we have, instead of lamenting what we do not.

This year I noted that the usual Pagan artifacts called “Christmas decorations” and other ubiquitous multicultural holiday items and symbols associated with the numerous feasts, festivals and festivities surrounding the Winter Solstice began appearing in the retail outlets just before October 31. It was difficult to find Autumn, turkey and Pilgrim-themed linens and accents among the garish displays of cheerful red, green and gold articles commingled with leftover orange, black and purple horror movie cliches.

I could grumble about Thanksgiving being taken for granted, but Thanksgiving is a time for thanks so I will be grateful because the paltry retail shelf space means that Thanksgiving remains relatively free of the burdens of ostentation and the crassness of conspicuous consumerism. I will also appreciate how the lack of political or religious controversies (I’m sure someone somewhere is complaining about something, but nobody else seems ready to really listen or care) demonstrates that Thanksgiving is virtually impermeable to the forces of commercialization and politicization. Retailers can’t figure out how to oversell it and politicians can’t find a way to exploit it.

I suppose that I should also be happy that I only have to go to one store to hunt and gather for the big day. I already have an autumnal tablecloth, turkey-shaped salt and pepper shakers and Pilgrim figurines. My annual Thanksgiving holiday shopping will consist of obtaining the overflowing cartload of groceries I will require to prepare my sumptuous Thanksgiving banquet of roast turkey with my best stuffing, mashed potatoes and my special gravy, cranberry sauce, mixed vegetables, biscuits and pumpkin pie. I’m thankful (and kind of hungry) already!

From time to time, I perform a vanity search over at Technorati, to see who might be talking about me because the usual deafening cybersilence keeps me humble — but not this time.

Wow! I’m getting famous! 56 days ago (I took a two-month break from the blogging thing), somebody who calls himself “The Formal Observer” actually took the time to write an article about little ol’ me, Margaret Romao Toigo — Liberal in Libertarian Clothing.

Mr. TFO flatters me as a “blogging diva” and “the darling of Blogcritics.org.” I had no idea that I had attained such a lofty status. I thought I was just another wannabe intellectual with a web server.

I am now trembling with self-importance and my head is positively swollen with the notion that I am a threat to “the only sane and sensible political philosophy– conservatism.”

“She appears ‘fair and sensitive’ on the surface but she is poisoned at the soul because of her obvious and latent hatred for America’s traditional values. These are the people I most despise– the poseurs. Her viciousness is cloaked in this deceptive collegial discourse.”

Well, as they say, you aren’t anybody until you have a few detractors. So, I thank Mr. TFO for not only being one of my critics, but also for the grandeur with which he has so generously credited me.

If only I really had such power…

Principles are easy to maintain when we feel safe and secure, but they mean nothing when we cast them aside the moment some aspect of them makes us uncomfortable.

The ACLU is often misunderstood because of the odd bedfellows it has kept. When some people learn how the ACLU has stood up for the rights of NAMBLA and Neo-Nazis, they just don’t get it. How could an organization that claims to be “our nation’s guardian of liberty” champion for such horrible people? Why should anyone even care about the civil rights of pedophiles and hatemongers? Should people like that even be entitled to civil rights?

When the ACLU takes on unpopular and controversial causes, the limits of our American principles are tested and some people simply do not have the stomach for those tests because they are, quite understandably, afraid of the possible negative effects that “too much” freedom — as if there is such a thing — might have upon the bestial side of our (and perhaps their own) human nature.

But America is called the “land of the free and the home of the brave” because living in freedom requires an awesome amount of courage. We must have the fortitude to resist any temptation to curtail civil liberties because freedom, by its very definition, cannot be arbitrarily limited or rationalized away for the purpose of expediency or convenience.

Much to the consternation of civil authoritarians, the ACLU has, on many occasions, successfully argued that even the most vile and disgusting barely-human beings are entitled to due process and equal protection under the law, and that our First Amendment protects all speech¹ — not just popular speech.

The recognition of NAMBLA’s and the Neo-Nazis’ rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly is a crucial test precisely because their respective messages are so repulsive. If the rights of the likes of NAMBLA and the Ne0-Nazis can be secured, recognized, guaranteed and protected, then we can rest assured that the forces of tyranny and oppression have been kept in check.

However, we must never falter when it comes to the protection and defense of our civil liberties, even when they are perceived as getting in the way of fighting our worst fears. No exceptions can be made when it comes to our civil and human rights because the only crimes to which a “zero tolerance” policy can be rationally and logically applied are tyranny and oppression.

There can be no prisoners taken in the fight against tyranny and oppression for they are the most heinous crimes of all, often committed by perpetrators whose reactionary intentions seem benevolent, noble and even necessary for the common good. Well-intentioned tyrants and oppressors play upon our worst fears and tempt us with a false sense of security that will supposedly protect us from the specter of lesser crimes.

The fights against child molestation and bigotry are indeed noble causes, but we must never forget that freedom is noblest cause of all. Sacrifices must be made for the cause of freedom and the most important sacrifice we make toward that cause is the lack of personal comfort that appears to come from the false sense of security that tyranny provides for the cowardly.

The ACLU is on the cutting edge of testing the limits of our Constitution and Bill of Rights and discovering that there really aren’t many left. In the wake of the historic recognitions of our rights to privacy², the expansion of freedom, as it was laid out by our Founders a little over 2 centuries ago, is becoming more important than quelling the anxieties of vainglorious cowards who are quite willing to sacrifice freedom for all of us just to fill their own selfish need for solace.