Happy Holidays
07 December, 2005 :: 1:10 p.m.
Am I the only one who is grateful that we live in a country so super-fucking-fantastic that we apparently have no real issues to worry about anymore?
The conservative Christian right has been screaming for at least the last couple of holiday seasons about war being waged on Christmas and Christians. How dare a giant chain of stores tell employees to say, "Happy Holidays," to customers they greet instead of, "Merry Christmas!" Everyone knows that there are no other holidays this time of year and that the birth of Jesus is the only thing that matters (aside from doing our patriotic duty of buying, buying, buying to keep the economy strong and prove "USA IS #1!!!" Hell Yeah!)...
OK, again, I am not a Christian nor am I Jewish or Muslim or anything else...so I don't know who the people getting offended by being told "Merry Christmas" happen to be, but at least if you celebrate something else, I can understand sort of feeling like, "Hey, why is everyone always shoving Christmas down our throats? Why can't my holiday celebration be acknowledged?" And still, as with the Christians whining now, my initial response would be that there are far more serious things in the world to worry about, but at least I can understand that thought...
But Christians are wasting money from their churches, wasting their own money, writing books, doing letter writing campaigns, staging boycotts...all over businesses choosing Happy Holidays to Merry Christmas? Especially this time of year, instead of wasting money trying to draw attention to yourself, shouldn't the focus be feeding and clothing the hungry and those less fortunate? Can you really justify spending $10,000 on ads to boycott stores when that could have provided Christmas dinner for the poor? Is Jesus looking down and saying, "Those Americans bastards! How dare they capitulate to other religions and celebrations and allow the focus to be taken away from my birth?" I don't attend church anymore; I don't sit around reading the Bible in my off time. That being said, I do remember growing up going to church and Sunday school and being taught that Jesus was a rather humble person and that his concerns focused on helping others not on his own personal comfort. I don't really see him being upset about the "Happy Holidays" and I can't imagine him waging a letter writing campaign or organizing a boycott of a store when there are sick and starving people (or even kicking back and spending time with your own friends and family and just relaxing and enjoying your own celebrations). Perhaps my favorite part of all of this is that even George W. has managed to piss off his conservative Christian base by sending out a "Happy Holidays" card instead of a Christmas card...I hate the man as much as anyone, but he's still the president of the United States...are we really supposed to think he has time even to relegate the task of checking the religiou background of every person in every family he sends a card to to an underling? What if he knows a couple where one is Christian and one Jewish? (no I'm not suggesting he would ever hang out with a couple like this, so calm down conservative Christians...I'm just saying maybe he's accepted money from such a couple) Each gets his or her own card or what? He's the fucking president, he doesn't even have time or desire to personally sign the 1.4 million cards being mailed out from the White House, let alone match each one up with religious preference and personality. Fuck!
Now I've said all this and it's how I feel, but I can't stand the people that go too far either...again, I thought we had bigger issues in this country than worrying about referring to Christmas trees as Holiday trees and not allowing Christmas parties in schools because it's a religious celebration and all of that crap...future generations are going to look back at this time of overwhelming PCness and, at best, laugh...probably they will wonder how anyone had time to just enjoy a moment of life without worry about stepping on toes or ending up in a lawsuit. If we all just treated one another with respect and spent more time worrying about ourselves and our own lives instead of sticking our nose in every other person's it would be a whole lot better almost overnight.