In the spirit of the season, I’ve decided to indulge the paranoid fantasies of Christians who feel persecuted by the existence of non-Christmas holidays in December by punching them in the face if they mention it to me.
Good lord…nothing exemplifies a certain kind of Christian’s thin-skinned defensiveness like Lonesome Polecat’s assertion that making a greeting inclusive is explicitly insulting to Christians…
Time to pull out my “Blessed Solstice, Motherfuckers!” shirt. It has trees on it. SOLSTICE TREES.
<Christian> Well, bless your heart. </Christian>
(Any of the rest of you reckon **LonesomePolecat **bothered to research the holiday’s origins? Or did LP just stick fingers in ears and sing Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer while striding self-righteously towards the wrapping paper and ornament aisle at Wal-mart?)
Sadly, I have. I know an “Atheist Wiccan” who would make a point of telling anyone who said it that she wasn’t a Christian and would not be celebrating it (I think she’s stopped this). More common are the hypersensitive PC types who are ever-worried that someone* else* will be offended.
Not only do Americans say it - we’ve been saying it for well over a hundred years!
It’s easy to turn up copies of vintage postcards from ages ago that say things like “Seasons Greetings” and “Happy Holidays”. Here’s a couple quick google image searches - some of the results are modern (and some are random, of course) but there’s loads of results.
Any antique store in your area will have a shoebox full of these cards with all sorts of variations. You can find them on Ebay too -
here’s a quick search for “season’s greetings”, pre-1940 items:
The idea that this is some modern conspiracy of politically correct shopkeepers is just bullshit.
No. It’s because I don’t celebrate Christmas and continually trying to remind me about it or ask me about my plans for it, or how many presents I’ve bought for it just piss me the hell off.
It would be like me telling you “Happy I Fucked Your Mother Day!” The point isn’t whether I celebrate it, because I do (and look forward to it every year). The point, mac_bolan00, is that it makes you feel awkward being reminded of my celebratory habits when you don’t share in them. And yes, it would be easy for me to say, “hey mac_bolan00, I Fucked Your Mother day is for everybody. There’s more than enough of her to go around!” but you know, I’m not the type of guy that needs to flaunt my religious habits. I can just fuck your mother in silence and be happy that it’s that time of year again.
Understand?
Io Saturnaila!
We had a lynched angel down the street a few years ago. They hung a mannequin dressed like an angel from a tree, and in the dark, with the twinkle lights on, it did look like an angel hovering about 4 ft. off the ground.
In broad daylight, it looked like she’d run afoul of a mob of peasants with pitchforks.
Well, I don’t know about the rest of you overtly tolerant hand-holding kumbaya singing hippies, but I say *Happy Holidays *because the book of Micah says that one day fighting will cease and all will peacefull co-exist under their various gods. I just want to do my share and help God’s plan along:
Micah 4:3-5
King James Version (KJV)
3And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
4But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.
5For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.
People have been saying “Happy Holidays” for years. When I was in high school, more than two decades back, it was shorthand for “Merry Christmas & Happy New Year,” though; now it’s grown to include Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and (depending on the integration of different calender cycles) Ramadan as well. The only persons who object to it are persons who don’t want to acknowledge the existence of non-Christian holidays.
Laziness is certainly part of it for me. A properly timed “happy holidays” gets me from Halloween until arbor day.
That and sheer trollery. If someone simply showing a kind thought and wishing you “happy holidays” pisses you off, then you deserve to be pissed off. You deserve the stress. If your life is so damned cushy that two words will boil your blood, let it boil.
If it helps, all your pretend rage over two words makes me smile and feel a little better inside. It makes my holidays all the more merry. So happy holidays ya easily bothered so and so. 
What a bunch of varied responses. I always say Merry Christmas – my father’s Jewish (but not at all in tradition – we’ve never had a Seder or been to one as a family [though I’ve been to plenty as an adult], my mother’s Irish-Catholic, and I’m nothing, but I enjoy saying Merry Christmas. It just seems polite and makes me feel good.
I’ve never known anyone Jewish in life who gave a crap about Chanukhah “vs.” XMas, with the exception of a few (converts) to Orthodox, and it’s interesting to hear the other side of the coin. I understand the sentiment of feeling all this X stuff force-fed, just never really encountered anyone who cared too much beyond maybe grumbling a tiny bit.
Happy Sir Isaac Newton’s Birthday.
(And Persephone is the reason for the season.)
True story. I’m Jewish and was sitting in the lunchroom with a Sikh, a Muslim, a Hindu, and a Bahai and another Jewish guy came by and wished us all “Merry Christmas.” Only in America!
As to Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas, or even Happy Chanukah … I also don’t give a shit. People mean well in any case. Just don’t try to elevate Chanukah into something it is not just because they are both Winter Solstice celebrations. Then you have to endure my “the irony of Chanukah” rant, and you really don’t want to suffer like that.
No, axial tilt is the reason for the season.
and said, “Is this some kind of joke?”
Oh, since this is the “War on Christmas”, can we slap the hell out of people who get their panties in a bundle over the use of “Xmas”?
I’ll see your Micah and raise you a Joel 3:9 - 12:
So, I can use the all-purpose greeting “Happy Holidays” to be politely cheerful & at the same time tick off people like the two gigantic douchebags in this thread. Sounds like a win-win situation!
Of course, the folks who invented The War on Christmas are the direct spiritual descendants of the Puritans who banned celebrations on That Day because they were too Popish & Pagan…