Iggy the Grinch

Think what politicians put on their Christmas cards doesn't matter, is unimportant, and would be a waste of time to write about? Think again!

Lord, grant the writers of The Mark Newsroom the strength to match the intensity of Ezra Levant’s misplaced outrage. The Sun Media columnist is in a tizzy because “Michael Ignatieff’s Christmas card isn’t a Christmas card.” Apparently the Liberal leader’s season’s greeting mail-out bears not a single Christian symbol, and Levant takes this as further proof that Ignatieff is embarrassed by the Christian heritage of the country. We can appreciate that it’s annoying to watch politicians shy away from saying “Christmas” for pigheaded political reasons, but we just can’t muster up the energy to be as angry about it as Levant, whose indignation compels him to remind readers that Christianity is “the faith our Queen Elizabeth is officially the ‘defender’ of.” The spiritual battle waged on our behalf by the octogenarian monarch across the pond notwithstanding, the truly ridiculous part of Levant’s piece is when he claims that the “Christian spirit of tolerance and charity” is responsible for “the flow of refugees … from enslaved Arabia to the Christian West.” Really? All this time we thought refugees came here for socioeconomic reasons, but Levant’s logic does account for that massive influx of immigrants to the Christian countries of Armenia, Bosnia, and Ethiopia.

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald’s Paul Schneidereit takes the opportunity afforded by Justin Trudeau’s furry Christmas card to utterly deconstruct PETA’s anti-fur argument. The animal rights group promotes faux fur as an alternative, which Schneidereit points out ultimately does more damage because it’s “synthetic, produced from petroleum and other man-made compounds that persist in the environment long after natural fur.” In any case, at extreme (i.e., Canadian) temperatures, there is no substitute for real fur, and Schneidereit perfectly sums up why this means PETA’s arguments will continue to fall on deaf, fur-warmed ears: “While most people agree that animals should be spared unnecessary suffering, they’re not going to accept that animals have the same rights as humans, and therefore shouldn’t be eaten or utilized to make a host of necessary common products.” Amen.