As you may have heard, confirmed wanker Bill O’Reilly is on a tear this year about businesses who use “Holidays” or “Season” in place of “Christmas” in their advertising, their employee greetings, etc. Bill claims that this is part of a liberal plot to secularize Christmas, financed by wealthy Jew George Soros. His fellow Fox News wanker John Gibson has even penned a screed about it entitled The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought. Their idea is that liberals and non-Christians are “offended” by religious expressions around the holidays.
I’m sure there are a few people out there who truly take offense, but the idea that they are present in great enough numbers for Wal-Mart to give a damn about them is just pure right-wing porn. I know all kinds of liberals and non-Christians (not always the same folks, mind you), and I don’t know any who would “take offense” at references to Christmas.
So why do businesses do this? They clearly do; even Fox’s own online store was selling O’Reilly Factor “holiday” ornaments for your “holiday” tree until they got called on it. (Cite) Am I that wrong about people taking offense? Do businesses just have a perception that people take offense, stemming from legitimate efforts to curb government-sponsored religious displays and hysteria from O’Reilly and his ilk? Do they know, empirically, that this improves their bottom line?
My theory: “Christmas” is one day, “the Holidays” encompasses pretty much the last two months of the year. If you want people to ratchet up their spending, you’d rather they start as soon as possible. It’s hard to get someone in “Christmas” mode before December, but you might get them into the “Holiday spirit” shortly after Halloween.
I think it’s more a recognition that customers/employees celebrate several different holidays within this small space of time. Far, far easier to sell “Happy Holidays!” than fifty variants on a similar theme. Of course, Bill O’Reilly doesn’t need sensible evidence to see a conspiracy, so I doubt that fact will ever sink in.
At the time O’Reilly issued his rant, the Fox News online shop was selling the “O’Reilly Factor Holiday Ornament” , which has since been changed to The O’Reilly Factor Christmas Ornament after MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann noted the hypocrisy.
Because many of us are celebrating holidays other than CHRIST-mas in December. Some people aren’t even celebrating anything at all. Christmas has evolved from a pagean holiday that was bastardized into a Christian holiday into a Christian holiday that was bastardized into a winter celebration of consumerism. It’s not an issue of “offense” but of trying to be as inclusive of as many (paying) people as possible.
Last I checked, Christmas encompasses 1 day(2 if you want to include Christmas Eve) and maybe 12 if you want to go by the song. This Month happens to be december, not christmas and there are a number of holidays that fall this time of year.
So Holidays is more accurate, at least under December 24th/25th.
I’ve long since stopped taking O’Reilly seriously when he thinks “The War on Christmas” is more important then “CIA agent outed by White House Staffer”.
I believe that is right. Some people are excluded from the use of the word Christmas. Virtually no one is from the term “holidays”. From a business perspective, inclusion of as many customers as possible is a good thing.
The most un-Christmasy thing that is going on this December is the bickering about the issue. One church bulletin I received said that stores are being brow beat (sic) into not using “Merry Christmas.” HIs words are full of anger and distrust.
Bill O’Reilly curls his lip and sneers a Merry Christmas. That’s the Christmas spirit? (No more Fox Amusement Time for me until after the Holy-Days.)
Yeah, thats kinda what I always assumed the reason was. Store’s want to remind you that Christmas for as long a period as possible, cause it encourages you to start buying things. It’s a little weird to say Merry Christmas to someone on Nov 30th though, but the time between Thanksgiving and New Years is generally regarded as “The Holidays”.
I’m sure being inclusive has something to do with it as well, but I doubt that most Jewish, Hindus or Athiests are going to storm out of Walmart because someone wished them a Happy Christmas, and in most regions of the US such folks are a pretty small section of the customer base anyways.
Stores also sell Hanukkah crap and soon they’ll probably sell Kwanza stuff as well.
Anyhow screw those right-wing nuts who believe that anything that doesn’t view white American Christians as the center of the universe as “conspiracy”.
Anyhow I don’t care what they hell you call them so long as I get a few days off from work.
Why are the 'Pubbies getting sand in their vaginas about this just now? Businesses have been doing this for years.
I could just as easily spin this into a far left wing rant about laissez faire economics; “The evil corporations are only performing an act of inclusion so they can get people to spend more money!”
I am 62 years old. Calling this season “the Holidays” is not a new liberal conspiracy in any way.
Back in the 50’s, when I was a kid, -------it was called the Holidays. (or possibly the Christmas holidays------but most people dropped the Christmas part)
On the subject of religious hypocrisy, the author Idries Shah quoted a Persian proverb : chon kofr az ka‘beh bar ayad,
koja manad mosalmani?
When infidelity arises from the Ka‘bah,
where can Islam remain?
By analogy the Ka‘bah of the Christian Right Wing movement is the Bush White House. When Bush himself, in his capacity as head of state, is telling the nation “Happy Holidays,” it makes O’Reilly and them look exceedingly foolish. More royalist than the king. OK, you may think I’m a Bush hater — and you’d be right — but this is one thing that Bush has actually gotten correct, give him credit for that.
(I know it probably wasn’t Bush’s personal idea, some White House staffer did that, but it’s still Bush’s responsibility that it was approved.)
Gee, and to think, all this time I thought it was a Christian, right wing conspiracy meant subvert all other religious holidays during this time of year (you know, it’s like the Jewish Christmas, etc etc). They’re all the same, so let’s celebrate the ‘holidays’ while pretty much exclusively using the trappings of Christmas.
I agree. Even as a kid “the holidays” was a common phrase. I always assumed it meant the holid-packed period that included Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years (and my birthday, a week later).
This was Texas in the 60s, so there was no PC about it. “Holidays” was not anti-Christmas, it was just about MORE than just Christmas.
Wow. If Christmas were truly about Christ, shouldn’t the business leaders be thanking Jesus for, ya know, salvation, instead of profits? Could O’Reilly possibly push for a more secularized version of Christmas?
As a semi-interesting sidenote, I’m currently reading The Battle for God by Karen Armstong. Armstrong claims that many of the secularizations we know of today were initiated originally by the religious in a time when society was rapidly changing, as a new way of being religious when the old ways were no longer working. Armstrong also claims that we are in the midst of a similar realignment today. Perhaps this is evidence of the change?
Judeo-Christmas. Right. Well, if the Messianic Jews can have Christo-Hanukkah, the Torahic Christians, or Christians for Moses,* can have a Judeo-Christmas, right? Turnabout is fair play.
*I don’t know if Christians for Moses actually exists. It may have been just a sarcastic remark by a rabbi in a news article about Jews for Jesus.
O’Reilly’s not the only one braying about this; the other day I tuned into a local conservative radio host, and he was encouraging people to boycot stores that wish you a “Happy Holidays.”
In a way I would think it would be good for Christians to take “Merry Christmas” out of the stores. If they’re decrying the secularization of their holiday, shouldn’t they be happy if it’s no longer associated with the ring of a cashier? Leaving “Merry Christmas” to a personal greeting between fellow Christians seems much more in keeping with the supposed spirit and meaning of the holiday.
Thanks, rjung, you rock! LMFAO