Amen.

I sent the following message to all my friends and thought I’d send it to y’all.

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the
most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular traditions at all, and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset accepted calendar year 2009, but without due respect for the calendars of choice of others, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual orientation of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms:

This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for him/herself or others and is void where
prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or the issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Jeff

AMEN. And bottoms up.

As one who wasn’t even baptized and is more than willing to skewer Christianity at the drop of a hat, i still say “Merry Christmas”. And actually, “Happy Holidays” kind of pisses me off…i don’t know why, it just does.

But i will say that the religious right’s attempt to make us all bow to the “reason for the season” is simply laughable. Where’s Christ in all of this? I see a lot of Santa Claus, drug induced shamanic symbol turned into the figurehead of orgiastic consumerism that he is…but not a whole lot of peace on earth and good will towards men.

Then again, i don’t see a lot of Christ in Christianity (and hence my willingness to skewer). Christmas – by whatever name one chooses to call it – is a celebration of moving from the dark to the light, which was essentially Christ’s message. So i figure that it’s ok to ignore that fact that Jesus was almost certainly not born in December. It’s probably ok to trim the pagan tree rather than decorating a fish. And “Merry Christmas” sounds a lot less forced than a politically correct “Happy Holidays”.

So…Merry Christmas, Scrogues. Now if you’ll excuse me, i’ve been collecting reindeer urine all day and i’m all set to celebrate Christmas the old, old fashioned way.

While I agree with you that there are many who are oversensitive to Christmas greetings, I submit that this oversensitivity would not exist if there weren’t so many “Christians” who continue to insist that those of us who aren’t Christian are unwelcome in “their” country.

I think the answer to this is very simple, really. Once enough American Christians reject those who insist that there is something wrong with those of us who do not share their faith, all of this will right itself.

The Europeans don’t mind expressions of Christmas cheer because Christians in most countries there are not to be feared. Here in the US, we would be foolish not to fear them.