November 29, 2017

War on Christmas Update

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With Bill O’Reilly gone, is Fox News keeping up the good fight against us secular liberals and our war on Christmas? Probably. So here’s some raw data for you, courtesy of Google’s ever-entertaining Ngram Viewer:

Hmmm. Since 1970, use of the word Christmas has gone up by almost 50 percent, while the word holiday has gone up only about 33 percent. As a check, Easter has stayed totally flat. Apparently there was never really much of a war in the first place: it turns out that the forces of Santa Claus have been implacably grinding out a victory all along. Except at the White House, of course:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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