Happy Holidays!
Actually, Blalron, New Years is not a Jewish holiday. Jews have a different calendar, and celebrate “New Year” (aka Rosh Hashannah) sometime in September.
I think you misread Blalron’s post – I think he meant that “holidays” is inclusive of Christmas and New Year’s. The status of New Year’s hasn’t got anything to do with it.
My Jewish ex-fiance took me out for New Year’s two years ago, so I’m guessing a lot of Jews do it as a secular thing.
You know, I was reading this and I swear, my eyes are going bad because I read this as “Mr. and Mrs. C.” and all I could think was “Hey, hey, hey! Leave Tom and Marion Cunningham out of this! When did Happy Days ever change Christmas to ‘holidays’?”
I think maybe it’s time for bed.
Ava
Winter Break? You got a problem with the southern hemisphere, asshole?
There seems to be no “neutral” term left in the language- everything has a political and sexual connotation these days. It’s really too bad that this type of disagreement exists; wars have started over less.
Maybe we should just call this season the “I’m glad that the earth contiues to rotate and provide us with varied seasons” holiday.
We could even out the calendar and have a celebration at each solstice and equinox, giving gifts and taking time to party. Just fold all the nearby holidays into these “holiday seasons”- Easter and St. Patrick’s day into Spring Holiday, us Americans could make a long week out of the Summer Solstice with Independence Day finishing off the celebration, and Labor Day could be involved with the Autumnal Equinox festivities.
4 weeks + of partying just created- let’s go!
Happy Festivus!
“Days off with no repercussions.”
Feel free to use sick days or absences for your religious needs. Don’t take it personally.
Rationalist here who prefers “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays.” I like to greet each holiday as it comes instead of using the namby-pamby catch-all of “the holidays.” I detest the faux-inclusive mindset that sucks away the vitality and uniqueness of Christmas, Hanukkah (or Chanukkah–could you guys take a break from secretly ruling the world and please give us a ruling on that?), and Kwanzaa to give us a foggy, gray holiday of dullness, with accompanying Philip Glass score for Mr. Garrison’s class play.
Today’s Washington Post has an article that exactly sums up my feelings as a Christmas-loving atheist.
This just shows your bigoted insensitivity to Flat Earthers.
Count me in the opposite camp as gobear: As a non-theist who celebrates a pagan holiday full of eggnog, gift giving, indoor evergreens, and songs about a strange diety named Christ Cringle, and all this on or about the date of 12/25 (give or take a month), I’m most comfortable calling it The Holidays.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who detests the wishy-washy PCness of “the holidays”.
I actually saw a commercial that had the gaul to call a Christmas Tree a “Holiday Tree” - wtf?
When I was a kid I thought everyone in America went on vacation at Christmas. ‘Holidays’ in the UK does not mean Christmas - it means ‘trip to some place away from home.’ So basically to me ‘happy holiays’ sounds totally made up, and as irrelevent for Christmas as it is for any other religious festival.
FWIW, I’m an atheist, but Christmas is part of my culture and I’m not about to give it up!
This is the first year that I’ve actually had trouble wishing people a “Merry Christmas” for only my own reasons.
In other words: in the past I refrained from willy-nilly "Merry Christmas"ing people because I didn’t want to wish someone something they didn’t celebrate. (If it’s truly no big deal, let’s all wish each other Happy Eid this year, and Happy Chanukah next, and see how that goes, mmkay?)
But this year I have been feeling less and less a part of Christmas - I celebrate it with my Anglican family but that’s about it. I don’t decorate my house, my husband/friends and I don’t really buy each other anything, I hate christmas music, etc. It just feels false for me to wish someone a Merry Christmas, unless I am entirely sure that they celebrate it. In other words, my good wishes depend entirely on how they will take it. Anyone wishing me a Merry Christmas is indulging their own interests, not mine.
But as I note in this thread:
I wish we had something even more bland and innocuous than “holidays”
“Holiday” is derived from “Holy day.” That implies that there must be a religious connotation to the day that I find insulting as an agnostic. Don’t fucking wish me a “happy holy day.” I don’t * believe* in holy day, so just keep your hate speech out of my face!
Relax, I’m just kidding.