Yibbyl wrote: 

Nope.  No happy ending in this forum!  Time to search Google images. 

 kysmet wrote: 
Not you, others here. I used the you word generically, not you in particular, and I meant no offense to you personally. I apologize to you.

 hippiechick wrote: 
It's not my holiday. 

hippiechick wrote: 
When the fvck did I make fun of you?

 kysmet wrote: 
The conversation started because right wing congressman (or somebody, I don't even remember anymore) refused to appear in a parade because the parade holders changed the parade from a "Christmas" parade to a "holiday" parade. And Kurtster doesn't understand why everyone shouldn't want it to be that way, because his point is that it is a Christian nation, which it isn't.   

I didn't say I was offended by Christmas. It's the people who think that everyone should enjoy Christmas that I find annoying. The spirit of the season is the spirit of Christmas, and I don't celebrate Christmas. Period. If it makes you feel better to wish me Merry Christmas, go right ahead. If you want to be more sensitive, and recognize that it's not all about you and your holiday, then don't give me a greeting that means nothing to me. I know this is a hard concept to wrap your head around. I simply don't celebrate Christmas. I get tired being told that I should, or that I should enjoy it, just because everyone else around me does. I am not stopping you from celebrating, just don't think that I am wrong because I don't. It's like not being a sports fan, but being constantly bombarded by everything sports, and then people being pissed at you because you aren't jumping up and down for their team.

Scott wanted to know if I would be offended by being greeted by the Chinese New Year. I can't imagine anyone extending that greeting to me, because I do not celebrate the Chinese New Year. That doesn't mean I can't go to Chinatown and enjoy the parade. I don't walk around wishing people who aren't Jewish L'Shana Tova, Happy Jewish New Year, I can't imagine expecting people to want to hear that from me, or to make them come to synagogue to pray, or to participate in any other aspects of Jewish holidays. It would simply be in bad taste. What a person celebrates is up to them. No one has ever demanded that everyone gets the Jewish religious holidays off. In fact, most companies make those people take PTO days.

But I have certainly wasted enough breath on this subject. It's always easier to make fun of something than to try to understand where another person is coming from. That's the way it is for minorities. 

 lily34 wrote: 
thank you, sweetie 

 kysmet wrote: 
Oh, I think in Hippiechick's case it was more a matter of:   Get annoyed —-> Vent on a politically-related thread —->  Get attacked —->  Get defensive —-> Get attacked again —->  Massive Shitfight  —-> You know, the usual

 newwavegurly wrote: 
that's my favorite

 hippiechick wrote: 
And those of us who don't celebrate it wished you and others who celebrate a happy Hanukkah.  Is that ok? 

I don't consider myself Christian but I enjoy Christmas.  I have a friend who is an atheist, his wife is agnostic and they have a Christmas tree.  Christmas isn't the day that Jesus was born and most of the symbols are based on paganism anyway; it's up to you whether you want to look at it as only a Christian day of celebration.  You can't expect people to know whether you celebrate or not just like you don't know what they celebrate.  It's your choice to get all bent out of shape and waste energy on being offended or to take it as a nice gesture.  As lily said, it's pretty much just become a blanket statement anyway.

Merry Christmas.
it's good for the economy.

 duchamp wrote: 

well hey! happy birthday!!

 BasmntMadman wrote: 
 newwavegurly wrote: 

 
I did ask earlier if HC got cranky when someone said "Gung Hay Fat Choy" to her even though she's not Chinese. I'm guessing no because it just doesn't make any sense to. THAT is when the lines are drawn, not before.
 
Same goes with Thanksgiving, and all those high and mighty Canadians when you say Happy Thanksgiving they say We already had ours so Seriously what is that?

/deadhorse

 lily34 wrote: 
Actually, I just had a birthday............number sixty-two................so I'll take the Birthday Greeting gladly.  

Life is short; life is sweet.

 duchamp wrote: 
I, in recent years, have become the same. It's about the holiday season and people wish you a happy *insertyourholidayhere* based on what they celebrate. It needs to be taken in the spirit it is meant.
 
I admit, I didn't feel this way at one time, but I've learned a lot more about myself, about the people I'm friends with, and about people in general, so I have a better understanding of the intent than I used to.

So Merry Chrismakwanzakah, everyone!  

 Zep wrote: 
It was spawned by a This Modern World comic strip which humorously addressed the subject - it's posted a few pages back.

 buddy wrote: 
Back at ya, kid, good seeing your name around here, ya know?

Merry Yuleidchrismaquanzikah!!







.25 to P

Merry Christmas, Hippiechick!

Why is this discussion in RightWingNutZ?

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
It ain't the "spreading joy" part that's the problem.

Ours is not a civilization comprising many equal streams commingling, and people from each religion wishing everyone a happy holiday on whatever day they choose to celebrate.   The streams are there, all right, but the Christian one has predominated.

Christmas is hyped as the Season of Good Cheer and Peace Goodwill to Men and blah blah blah, but the holiday does have its down side.  The herd may get together for eggnog and dancing towards the omnipresent mistletoe, but the herd decides which to include and which to exclude.  There's a wonderful National Lampoon cover showing a girl with a puppy in her hand underneath the mistletoe, with an overweight man standing opposite her.  She's turning the puppy toward the man's pursed lips...posterior first.  A reminder that harsh old natural selection still exists in the Time of Joy.

In some ways its a reaffirmation of herd status;  the warmth of all the bodies packed in the room vs. the frigid cold outside. 

So...the wishing of a Merry Christmas to a non Christian carries with it the overtones of exclusion from the herd.  It may not be strictly rational, as the person objecting may have a large bunch of friends.   But since when were humans ever strictly rational creatures?  Or, rather, since when were their feelings are strictly rational? 

Snopes, though, maintains that suicide rates do not jump at Christmas, nor any indicators of psychological distress.  So it could be that the upside - the color, the sheer fun - balance out the downside.   But I find it impossible to believe that a downside doesn't exist.  And even Snopes mentions that the experts still consider the holidays a stressful time - people change patterns of eating, drinking, and sleep, and have to fight traffic jams and mobbed stores. 

Someone who'd tired and stressed out is going to be much more inclined to feel that Christmas is something jammed down their throat.

The main thing is not to get excessively bent out of shape over it;  virtually no one intends any malice by wishing anyone else a Merry Christmas.  Life's too short. 

Now, pardon me as I rush out to the store with the region's last packages of white C-7 light bubs so I don't have to pay nine frigging dollars for shipping from an online source.