John Lennon’s most obnoxious song
The late, great Beatle, John Lennon, has written some very fine songs. But boy has he written some clunkers. Two songs stand out as being particularly insufferable: “Imagine” and “Happy Xmas (The War is Over).”
Let’s start with the latter. The first sentence asks:
“So this is Christmas, and what have you done?”
Take a listen …
Lennon and his co-writer, wife Yoko Ono, are trying to make you feel guilty that you Christians aren’t doing enough to make the world peaceful, that somehow you’re actually phonies.
“Superficial do-gooders”
Writing in the National Review, Mark Milke characterizes their lyrics as “superficial do-goodery.” Says Milke:
“Those ten words have enough hubris to inflate the Hindenburg. It’s as if ordinary folk somehow should justify themselves to a 1960s–1970s rock star consumed by self and by error, as in his musical worship of anti-religious belief and consequences.”
Lennon’s issue was war; so is ours, only ours is the the war on the unborn. In fairness, Lennon’s views on abortion aren’t known, although Yoko Ono said she considered aborting their son Sean, but John said no. That speaks well of Mr. Lennon.
The transformation of the ‘peace and justice’ crowd
Sadly, the peace and justice crowd morphed from an anti-war movement in the 1960s into a pro-abortion movement in the name of women’s reproductive rights in the 1970s. That helps to explain this blog’s disdain for the opening line in this sorry Christmas song.
The pro-life movement has to endure endless sniping from Big Abortion and their acolytes demanding to know, ‘what have YOU done’ to help babies after they’re born.
The pro-life movement does so much nationally helping moms after their babies are born to possibly list here. In Des Moines, Pulse partners with Mary’s Helping Hands to provide clothing, diapers, and formula for the first two years of babies’ lives.
The largest pro-life group in the world
The largest pro-life group in the world, Catholic Charities, works non-stop:
√ Reducing infant mortality.
√ Boosting the number of kids with health coverage.
√ Increasing access to healthy food for the hungry.
√ Lessening the number of families and individuals forced to live in emergency shelters.
√ Expanding the quantity of affordable housing units.
√ Working to increase fathers’ involvement in families.
√ Expanding access to quality affordable early childhood education.
√ Increasing the rate of high school completion.
√ Raising the number of youth participating in postsecondary education or workforce training.
√ Adopting out more children than any other provider in the country.
If ever there was a pro-life group that helps babies after they’re born, it is the Knights of Columbus.
The Knights of Columbus supports the Special Olympics, you know the very kids abortion advocates abort at alarming rates. (Some 90% Down Syndrome babies are aborted.)
They buy ultra sound machines for pro-life pregnancy centers.
They provide funds to support refugee relief to help persecuted groups facing genocide around the world.
And they provide coats for kids; wheelchairs for the lame; and homes for the homeless.
There’s more …
Pro-lifers adopt babies and support women’s pregnancy centers in every state in the union. In fact, pro-lifers have erected an entire social safety net on their own dime helping women, as government programs often won’t let groups participate if they don’t refer clients for abortion services. That happened during the Obama presidency when the administration terminated a program run by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops helping women who were victims of human trafficking.
Lennon’s hectoring in this Christmas song is compounded by his unendurable anti-religion lyrics as expressed in “Imagine”:
“Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people living for today.”
Take a listen:
Hard to take
All of this is hard to take in light of Christianity’s relentless outreach to the poor over the past two millennia. The Catholic Church in particular founded the modern day university and hospital systems. Even today, Catholic hospitals care for one out of every seven patients in the U.S.
And yet Mr. Lennon became the poster child for driving young people from the Church by using his platform to preach his smug sermons:
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
John Lennon’s most obnoxious song
So what is John Lennon’s most obnoxious song? This blog votes for Happy Xmas (The War is Over) as Lennon presents his secular religion in Christmas wrapping paper. We live in an era of woke virtue-signaling where self-righteous elites constantly lecture the little people on their moral failings.
Our tirade isn’t meant to diminish the good songs John Lennon wrote, nor even his activism to promote peace. After all, who opposes peace? But we live in an age where pro-lifers are constantly asked: “what have you done?”
In this Christmas season, we respond: much. We believe that peace begins in the womb. It seems only fitting that we end this essay in Mr. Lennon’s own words, “All we are sayin’ is give peace a chance.”