I haven’t been paying much attention to right-wing media lately, but Mr. Slowpoke just informed me that the “War on Christmas” is apparently still on. I’ve been so busy traveling and working and preparing to bake a feast and saying “Merry Christmas” to people I know who celebrate Christmas, I didn’t even notice! Anyway, I thought I’d share this cartoon from the Great Christmas Battle of 2005.
(PS: I received an early Christmas present in the form of having a cartoon published on NPR.org yesterday. I think I may have a cartoon in the LA Times this Sunday too!)
Congrats on the NPR inclusion! That’s awesome (and it’s an especially funny cartoon, I think).
Our pastor’s Christmas sermon was on the “War on Christmas”. He’s not sympathetic. While I don’t always agree with him (he’s well to the left of me, which makes for interesting discussions during our monthly breakfast) I’m on board with him on this one. Christmas does tend to be swamped with secular concerns, especially materialism. It takes a little work to celebrate it as it should be. But I’m not so sure that this is bad. People should have to put in some work to celebrate and observe Christmas. If they actually have to put some thought into it perhaps that will make them appreciate it more.
Although “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” did hit my ear a bit sideways one time recently. The CEO of a banking concern was addressing a group of some 1500 I was in and after speaking wished us all “Happy Holidays”. The reason I found it jarring was that we were all at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Chicago for the Do It Yourself Messiah. For those of you not familiar with Handel’s Messiah, it’s an oratorio whose libretto is made up completely of Scripture selections that foreshadow and celebrate the Messiah’s coming. We in the audience were there to listen to the orchestra and soloists perform their parts of the work and to sing the choruses. I think it would be fairly incredible that anyone in that gathering would be offended by “Merry Christmas”. Perhaps he was too fixated on corporate speak to actually think about what was going on (his bank sponsors the performances).
So, then, for those of you who engage in the spirit and the hope of this part of the Christian year, let me offer the wish that you have a very Merry Christmas.
I don’t think it’s quite a matter of being offended, RonF, but maybe of courtesy – of realizing that, even in a group gathered to hear Handel’s “Messiah”, not every person is necessarily a Christian. I would not ever be offended by the words “Merry Christmas”, but it always does seem like a large assumption for the person saying it to make, if they don’t know me.
Maybe he says them interchangeably. I do.
I’m younger that RonF, but I feel quite sure that for most of my life Happy Holidays was a completely neutral phrase that encompassed the time leading up to Christmas, Christmas and then New Year’s Day. And then somehow in the last four or five years, people started making a political issue out of it.
Unless you’re pretty old, long before, even.
Robert presents further evidence that Happy Holidays is a Jewish plot.
Those Jews, always up to something.
Listen to the Messiah? Ledasmom, this is a Do-It-Yourself Messiah. People were there to perform it. People show up an hour or half-hour before the performance and stand outside and in the lobby singing Christmas carols – in 4 part harmony – waiting to get in. They sit in their seats ordered by voice (Sopranos stage right, Altos and Tenors across to Basses on stage left). They follow along in their scores while the soloists sing and then stand up to sing lyrics like
I suppose it’s possible that there are some people there not singing, but I’ve been there for 12 years running and I’ve never seen that or heard anyone say “I’m just here to listen”. And even if they are, in context I rather doubt they’ll be offended by “Merry Christmas”.
Again – I’m talking about this particular instance. In general I can see where a store clerk would say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” – they don’t know who’s buying that shirt from them. I think this became a socio-political football when corporations started actively forbidding their clerks from saying “Merry Christmas”, which used to be fairly common.
You know, in the East Coast, I grew up where everyone said Happy Holidays. Store clerks said it, businesses sent holiday cards with it, and it was no big deal. A bunch of bumbles from bumbleville have just discovered that not everyone is Christian and now it’s a big deal. Corporations didn’t “just start” forbidding their employees from saying MC. It’s been that way for years and years on the East Coast and no one thinks twice. The Midwest and South are just behind the times, that’s all.
I’ve sung Messiah. I’ve spent whole days singing carols at public events for charity. This is not because I am Christian (often the whole choir would be atheist or Jewish), but because I enjoy singing and raising money for charity.
I would not be offended by being wished merry Christmas, but I would much much much prefer being wished happy holidays as it treats everyone’s religions equally and doesn’t make assumptions about me.
As Vk says. One need not be of a religion to perform music associated with that religion, and it’s truly not a matter of being offended on the one side, but of being courteous on the other.
I’m not offended by “merry Christmas”; December 25th is Christmas in the Roman Catholic tradition whether I celebrate it or not, merriness is good, ergo it’s highly unlikely that someone who says “merry Christmas” wishes me ill.
I am offended by the otherizing, by the denial of my existence as an American who is not Catholic or mainstream Protestant, and — not inherent to “merry Christmas” but often comorbid with vehement objections to “happy holidays” — by the implication that there’s no Christian hegemony in the U.S.