Trump Tells Evangelicals: ‘We’re Saying Merry Christmas Again’
Image by Getty Images
By Sam Kestenbaum October 13, 2017
Speaking at the Values Voter Summit on Friday, an annual gathering of Christian conservatives, President Donald Trump said that under his presidency, he wanted people to proudly say “Merry Christmas” during the holidays.
“We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values,” Trump said to applause. “As we approach the end of the year — you know, we’re getting near that beautiful Christmas season that people don’t talk about anymore. They don’t use the word Christmas because it’s not politically correct.”
“You go to department stores and they’ll say Happy New Year and they’ll say other things,” he added. “Well, guess what? We’re saying Merry Christmas again.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has brought up the so-called “War on Christmas” — the belief that public greetings and celebration of the Christian holiday have been chased out of the public sphere. While he was still campaigning in 2015, Trump promised that, “If I become president, we’re all going to be saying Merry Christmas again, that I can tell you. That I can tell you.”
And in July, Trump devoted a large portion of a speech at the Kennedy Center to defending public displays of Christianity.
Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Is ‘New Absolute Bagel’ real? A sign stirs fretful optimism on the Upper West Side.
-
Fast Forward Chicago man charged with hate crime for attack of two Jewish DePaul students
-
Fast Forward In the ashes of the governor’s mansion, clues to a mystery about Josh Shapiro’s Passover Seder
-
Fast Forward Itamar Ben-Gvir is coming to America, with stops at Yale and in New York City already set
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Is ‘New Absolute Bagel’ real? A sign stirs fretful optimism on the Upper West Side.
-
Opinion Yes, the attack on Gov. Shapiro was antisemitic. Here’s what the left should learn from it
-
News ‘Whose seat is now empty’: Remembering Hersh Goldberg-Polin at his family’s Passover retreat
-
Fast Forward Chicago man charged with hate crime for attack of two Jewish DePaul students
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.