I just avoid all controversy by wishing everyone a Happy Santa’s Birthday! and keep movin’.
I’m just not seeing the outrage…is an upside-down tree the same as an upside-down cross or something?
What’s wrong with an upside-down cross? Is it like an upside-down flag?
Ask St. Peter.
What’s wrong with an updside-down flag? Is it like an upside-down cake?
If so, I think we’ve solved it. The objection to “Happy Holidays” is that pineapple should never be cooked.
I think is some sort of subtle code for having a Christmas tree that, even if you sold it, it’s not worth as much as you still owe…
I guess it depends on the person. I have a good friend who is Jewish and ever since childhood we have been sharing holidays with each other. Now that we are older, she gets my kids gifts for the Jewish holidays and I get her kids Christmas gifts, Easter baskets, etc. This is how my kids learned the dreidel game.
This year I gave her kids one of those wooden advent calendars with a little toy in each of the 25 days and she always gets my kids a present for each of the 8 days of Hanukkah. “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Hanukkah” are a given*.
We feel like we are both sharing a bit of our culture with each others’ families. I think it’s lovely.
*Edited to Add: This is not limited to this one friend (though the gift giving is). I have many Jewish friends who I wish Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. I would neve mean it as ridicule at all and I’m sure they do not take it that way. Could be because we live in a very diverse area where people are members of all sorts of religions…
Santa is to Holiday as Jesus is to Christmas.
And I think you’re getting coal for Christmas.
OP is to internet butt-hurt what his mom is to actual butt-hurt.
A Jewish friend of mine wrote me this: “Here’s a few for ya–My wife got shit from her kindergarten teacher for having the ovaries (even at that tender age) to suggest that they include some Chanukah songs in the public school “holiday” concert (early 1970s). She didn’t want to sing in the concert if they weren’t going to include her holiday. My father’s family fled Ukraine in 1922 after a pogrom. On both sides of my family, people had to change their last names in order to avoid religious discrimination. If any uptight “Christians” need to be told to kiss the ass of someone whose family has experienced real religious persecution, mine is big enough to go around.”
Amusing to me that people who are in the majority, and who according to the great Eddie Izzard “have enough power and money to make Solomon blush” have to manufacture fake persecution because some people won’t use their phrase of choice.
if i’m after “correctness,” it wouldn’t matter whether i’m in the majority or not. i mean, when emepror hirohito’s picture made it to the cover of time, time mag included the request of japanese officials that readers should display that issue properly (prominently) like in a book stand, and not let it lie around and put things on top of it. some readers complied, most didn’t care. you get my point? it’s not the japanese who have a problem.
The solution is to stop treating imaginary friends like real people.
I’ll usually answer that my family is celebrating Christmas in a traditional Jewish manner - Dim Sum and a movie!
Okay, for bonus points, Chanukah is a minor holiday glommed onto Winter Solstice celebrations that have been extant forever, that commemorates a very real war. What was the point of that war and why is elevating Chanukah into a Jewish Christmas so that Jewish kids can fit in with the Christian boys and girls, the overwhelming “other” culture, a pinnacle of irony?
Bonus question two - what kind of rulers did the Maccabees make? (What they don’t teach you in Jewish religious school.)
Weren’t they Puritans, of a sort?
It’s not more correct to say Merry Christmas than Happy Holidays, no matter how many times you claim that it is . You can call the color of the grass blue all you like, but that doesn’t make it correct.
And I have no idea what the fuck the Time magazine example is supposed to illustrate, other than your continuing inability to communicate.
it’s bad only because of your inability to comprehend. and didn’t they teach you how to cross-reference? what am i saying? people here can’t even distinguish between santa and jesus.
Cite?
We know the difference between Santa and Jesus. Apparently YOU don’t. Nor do you know the difference between a phrase that allows the speaker to include all possible forms of celebration at a time of the year when there are multiple celebrations, and a phrase that singles out only one of those.
hard to search time archives. try to recall the feature on the hiroshima bombing wherein the main feature story was titled “war of the worlds.” there was a special report on how the ruling house was slowly introduced to the world. you know that one? the one with hirohito pictured riding a white horse with a battle sword slung on the horse’s rump?