Warner Todd Huston

Joseph and Mary Were NOT ‘Refugees, or ‘Immigrants,’ or ‘Homeless’ in Bethlehem–Stop Saying They Were

December 20, 2025 by
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It is that time of year again when left-wingers try to co-opt the Bible to support their anti-American ideals, and this time of year, they often abuse the birth of Christ by saying that Christ’s earthly parents, Joseph and Mary, were either homeless, were refugees, were immigrants, or even mostly outrageously, were “Palestinians.” The fact is, they were NONE of those things.

One sickening example came in 2024 when useful idiot Bear Grylls jumped to his X account to claim that Jesus’ mother Mary was a “Palestinian” and the family were “refugees.” But everything he said is a lie.

Grylls launched his false account of the birth of Christ saying the world is celebrating the “birth of a Middle Eastern refugee” who “changed the course of the world forever.”

“This is just a short extract from near the beginning of the adventure. When Maryam, a young, poor, and no doubt terrified Palestinian girl, gives birth in a run-down animal pen, to a baby who was foretold for hundreds of years,” he continued.

“Yet she was not alone. And she never would be. Because this was the moment that God Almighty broke into our fallen world in person,” he wrote, concluding, “To many of us, it is undoubtedly: The Greatest Story Ever Told.”

This is all a terrible warping of the truth. And for his lies, X slapped a brutal community note on him:

Grylls is far from the first left-winger to push around lies like this. His sort of fact-free, agenda-driven leftism has been disgorged by leftists for decades.

A few years ago, ABC chief political analyst Matthew Dowd similarly jumped to his Twitter account to ladle out the same shop-worn and false liberal claim that Jesus Christ’s parents, Joseph and Mary, were “two immigrants” in Bethlehem in the tale of the first Christmas. It all amounts to fake news that is over 2,000 years old.

Going back thousands of years for his Christmas Eve fake news, Dowd slanted the Christmas nativity story by saying Joseph and Mary were “immigrants” who were turned away by many in the town. “Let us remember today,” Dowd wrote, “2 immigrants, a man, and his very pregnant wife, sought shelter and were turned away by many. She gave birth in a manger.”

This claim that Joseph and Mary were “immigrants” is a mischaracterization long used to push a modern-day policy of immigration amnesty. The left’s argument goes: If even Jesus Christ’s parents were “immigrants,” how can today’s American Christians be against open borders and amnesty?

But the truth is, the famed Biblical couple were not “immigrants” at all. Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem to register for Caesar’s Internal Revenue Service. The pair had made their way to Bethlehem to register for a government census so that they could be assessed their tax bill.

The key excerpt comes in the Book of Luke, Chapter 2, (New International Version), which reads:

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

So, Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no guest room available for them.

Neither Joseph nor Marry were in town to “immigrate” to Bethlehem. They were there to be identified and registered by the government.

But even if Joseph and Mary did intend to move to Bethlehem in the Christmas story, they would still not be “immigrants” because their hometown of Nazareth and the Christmas story town of Bethlehem were still in the same country. You can only be an “immigrant” when you are leaving one country and entering another.

Further showing his unfamiliarity with the Christmas story, Dowd made the mistake of saying that Mary “gave birth in a manger.” That would have been quite a trick because a “manger” is the wooden box Baby Jesus was placed in after his birth. In fact, Mary gave birth in a stable, and then her baby was laid in a manger.

In addition, neither Joseph nor Mary were “Palestinian.” Both were Jewish people who were from Judea which was under the rule of the Roman Empire.

Liberals also co-opt the Christmas story in other ways. Joseph and Mary are often claimed to be “homeless” and “poor.” In truth, they were neither. They had a home in Nazareth, and Joseph was a carpenter for a living and had a middle-class lifestyle for his day.

So, just stop it. Joseph and Mary were not homeless. They were not trying to immigrate to Bethlehem. And they were not refugees from anything. They weren’t poor. And they weren’t Palestinians.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston, or at X/Twitter @WTHuston

Warner Todd Huston

The Kwanzaa Scam: The Fake ‘Holiday’ Created by A Racist, Con Man, Rapist, and Torturer

December 15, 2025 by
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Kwanzaa, claimed to be an “African” holiday that is celebrated only in the United States, is the ultimate politically correct, woke “holiday.” It is little observed, even by the black community in the U.S.A., of course, but those who do celebrate it are wholly unaware that this faux holiday was created in 1965 by a man with a very troubled past. As it happens, Kwanzaa inventor Maulana Karenga is an abject racist who has a violent criminal record, and is even a rapist who was convicted of torturing his victims.

Each year we are treated to one gauzy, fluff piece after another about how great Kwanzaa is by one PC spewing columnist or the other. This year, for instance, The Daily News gives us the nonsense that “Kwanzaa brings communities together,” and concludes that, “Kwanzaa unites Black communities and helps to celebrate heritage, culture and community spirit. The holiday rounds out the year with ritual and celebration.” In another such piece published not long ago, a “scholar” who claims to study the “oppression” of blacks in America today insisted in a piece for the Associated Press that Kwanzaa is an “important” holiday that is a wondrous time for “communal self-affirmation.” Then there was 2015’s Dallas Morning News piece titled “Look forward to Kwanzaa celebrations with storytelling, music and more.” We even find such helpful sites as TeacherPlanet.com’s, “Kwanzaa Resources for Teachers.” And last year we got the happy talk from Illinois with City Plans Kwanzaa Celebration December 26. Yes, the world is filled with celebratory lionization of Kwanzaa.

But about a half dozen years ago, the Houston Chronicle got in the act with a piece by Leslie Casimir titled “Learning about Kwanzaa from the holiday’s creator.” This one, though, offered a bit of a different take than the usual how-great-is-Kwanzaa themes because this particular piece celebrated the inventor of the faux holiday, Maulana Karenga, himself. So, instead of merely celebrating the manufactured holiday, Casimir amazingly made a hero of the rapist, race monger and violent thug who created it! To Casimir, Kwanzaa creator “Maulana Karenga” was indispensable.

To further the story about how wonderful Karenga was, Casimir also found a gullible parent who, with kid in tow, went to see the great man at a local community center.

Thomasine Johnson needed to get the record straight about Kwanzaa, a cultural holiday steeped in African traditions that celebrates family, ethnic pride and community.

With her 11-year-old grandson in tow, the Missouri City interior designer on Saturday brought her video camera to S.H.A.P.E. community center to hear from Father Kwanzaa “Maulana Karenga” in the flesh.”

But just like the manufactured holiday he invented out of whole cloth, this “Maulana Karenga” is also a false front created out of fluff and nonsense. As it happens his real name is not “Maulana Karenga,” but is instead Ronald McKinley Everett, AKA Maulana Ron Karenga, AKA Maulana Karenga. We’ll soon see that subterfuge, reinvention and smoke-and-mirrors are Karenga’s stock in trade.

In her piece, Casimir gave us her version of the history of this “holiday.” And the artifice has but a short history, at that.

Created in 1966 by Karenga, a professor of black studies at California State University at Long Beach, Kwanzaa was born out of the black freedom movement of the 1960s, when the Watts riots rocked Los Angeles. It starts the day after Christmas and ends on the first day of the new year.

Interestingly, Casimir employed the euphemism “black freedom movement” to describe the ideology of the group that Ronald McKinley Everett “Karenga” belonged to when he created Kwanzaa. In the 60s, Karenga was in an organization called US (as in “us” — blacks — against “them” — whites). US was a black power militant group that he founded, one that frequently clashed in violence with police and even other black power groups. Members of his group even killed two Black Panthers in 1969.

Yes, kindly professor Maulana Karenga, the murder-touting, segregationist, racist. What a role model for the kiddies he is, eh?

Casimir seemed not to understand why people would doubt this man, though.

Still, many people don’t know much about Kwanzaa or the elusive Karenga, who shuns giving interviews to the mainstream press.

Well, it’s not surprising that he doesn’t want to give too many interviews what with his record as a violent felon, and sexual criminal. And Karenga has a long criminal record. In 1971, for instance, Everett served time in jail for assault. By then Everett had changed his name to Maulana Ron Karenga and began to affect a pseudo African costume and act the part of a native African — even though he had been born in the USA.

It wasn’t mere assault Karenga was convicted of, either. It was the sexual assault and even torture that he perpetrated against some of his own female followers. At the time, The L.A. Times reported that he placed a hot soldering iron in one woman’s mouth and used a vise to crush another’s toe, of all things.

As writer Lynn Woolley wrote of Professor Karenga:

And so, this is Kwanzaa. The militant past of the creator is now ignored in favor of the so-called seven principles of Nguza Saba, principles such as unity, family and self-determination that could have come from Bill Bennett’s Book of Virtues. The word “Kwanzaa” is Swahili, meaning something like “fresh fruits of harvest.”

No one remembers the part about “re-Africanization” or the sevenfold path of blackness that Dr. Karenga once espoused. Hardly anyone remembers the shootings, the beatings, the tortures and the prison terms that were once the center of his life. It’s just not PC to bring that sort of stuff up now that Kwanzaa is commercialized and making big bucks.

But Casimir offers us Karenga’s prattle, anyway, treating it as the advice of a sage:

“As part of the black freedom movement, we were using this to return to our history and culture,” Karenga said.

He spoke to a crowd of about 100 people ” young and old ” at the Third Ward community center, headed by Deloyd Parker, an avid promoter of Kwanzaa’s Afrocentric traditions and beliefs.

“We have to wake up that history, we have to remember ourselves in a more expansive way,” Karenga said. “To liberate ourselves as ghetto dwellers.”

In a day when the black middle class numbers in the millions and when more whites than blacks voted for a black man for president, for “Karenga” to claim that blacks are still relegated to the “ghettos” smacks of race baiting and trying to “keep hope alive” so that he can continue to cause hatred between whites and blacks. And each year the Old Media is all too happy to assist him in his faux “holiday” endeavor.

Happy Kwanzaa, indeed!

Of course, if it wasn’t for an Old Media establishment that has given Karenga’s criminality a wholesale whitewashing, this faux holiday could never have gained as little traction it has. Put it this way; imagine if famed Ku Klux Klan member David Duke had created a holiday. Do you think the Old Media would have happily sold his creation to a misinformed public without mentioning Duke’s personal history? Not a chance, and rightfully so.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston, or at X/Twitter @WTHuston

Founders - History - Holiday - Thanksgiving - Warner Todd Huston

THANKSGIVING: The Pilgrims Succeeded Because They Dumped Communism, Not Because the Indians Saved Them

November 27, 2025 by
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Our kids have been taught fake news about America’s first Thanksgiving. The Indians didn’t save the Pilgrims. Ending communism did.

It is simply untrue that the Pilgrims were able to celebrate their first Thanksgiving feast because the noble Indians saved them by showing them the ways of America. No, in reality, the Pilgrims were saved because they replaced their original communist system with a capitalist ideal.

William Bradford’s fellows came to the Americas to start a colony that would be a light unto all humanity, one based on a strict adherence to the Christian Bible. They wanted the opportunity to live as they desired, unique and free from interference from the Church of England, the Crown, or British authorities.

But when they arrived near modern-day Massachusetts and founded Plymouth Plantation — which we often call the Plymouth Colony today — they came ill prepared to live in the wild land they encountered.

It is absolutely true that the members of the colony became friendly with the local Wampanoag Indians. It is also true that the natives helped the colonists learn a bit more about the bounteous land the Pilgrims came to call their own.

But the colony had a flaw inherent in its original plan and it wasn’t just a fatal unfamiliarity with how to survive in the new world. It was a flaw that almost doomed the colonists.

The problem was, the original plan for how the outpost would operate was essentially a communist system. The original plan was for all labors to contribute to a central store. Like a commune, everyone would work for the benefit of everyone else and all would benefit equally from the colony’s labors.

That plan sounded like a perfectly sensible, Christian ideal, after all. Bradford and his fellows thought everyone would love everyone else equally and in Christian charity all would be cared for equally.

Unfortunately, that is not how human nature works. And the colonists soon learned this the hard way.

The common store idea was a miserable failure because some wanted to take without giving as much into it as others had. In other words, Bradford found that some people just didn’t want to work that hard if they knew they were going to benefit from the common stores just like everyone else. Worse, some became embittered that they had worked so hard while others did not.

So, Bradford dumped the original communist ideal and replaced it with a more capitalist one by assigning a plot of land to each family to work as their own, the labors of which would benefit themselves first and foremost.

Bradford chronicled the change this way:

The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing — as if they were wiser than God.

For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.

The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labours and victuals, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them.

Worse, some were embittered by the system and felt that working for the common store was “a kind of slavery”:

And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.

But once Bradford assigned each family their own land, things began to turn around. “This had very good success,” wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands industrious.”

The change came just in time and tuned the colony around. Plymouth Plantations went from a failing effort into a successful one.

This is not to utterly discount the help and guidance that the Indians gave the Pilgrims. They were also an important part of the success of the Plymouth Plantations.

But the shop-worn story that the Pilgrims were stupid, starving, and dying until the noble Indians swept in and gave them a turkey and a pumpkin pie is a false narrative. The colonists did as much to save themselves by dumping a communist ideal as the Indians did to help them learn how to scratch out a life in the Massachusetts wilderness. As in most cases, real history is far more complicated than facile trope.

So, let’s put an end to the fake history, shall we?

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston, or at X/Twitter @WTHuston