For decades, the liberals have been professionally offended. “You said Oriental instead of Asian! Shame!” and all that rot. Now, the conservatives (or at least those who watch too much Fox News) are professionally offended. The target, of course, is the wholly mythical campaign against Christmas.
When I was a kid, I sold greeting cards for a while (a year or so, I don’t remember – it’s been a long time!). Many of those cards said “Happy Holidays” (which of course is a contraction from Holy Days in case you forgot) or “Season’s Greetings.” Never once did I hear someone put on a show of being offended that not every card said “Christmas” on it. Not a single time. I guess back then we didn’t have the benefit of a 24-hour news channel which needs ratings so badly that they can tell us exactly when and at whom we should be offended or outraged. Ah, those old days when we had to form our own opinions about things, instead of being spoonfed by Bill O’Reilly and his ilk.
There is plenty of documentation out there about the total lack of ethics practiced by Mr. O’Reilly, particularly in the craven nature of his lies about the anti-Christmas contingent. Every story I’ve seen that O’Reilly has touted as an example of people banning Christmas has been completely debunked. Have fun with your non-controversy, Right Wing Nuts.
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This presumed war on Christmas obsesses my coworkers too. Yesterday one of the girls at the office went on a rant about how it sucks that Christmas is so “politically incorrect”, and how horrible it is that Target employees are not allowed to say “Merry Christmas”, they’re required to say “Happy Holidays”. I sagely pointed out that there is going to be a rather large segment of Target’s shoppers that don’t celebrate Christmas, so what are the staff supposed to do, say “Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Blessed Feast of Ramadan, or Good Kwaanza to you Ma’am, , gee, hope we got your religious preference right when we thanked you for shopping here.”??? People need to really find something useful to be pissed of about.
As Jon Stewart said this week, there are technically (even to the Christians) at least two holidays celebrated around this time of year, Christmas and New Years. So, in English, a plural like that would get an “S” at the end, so “Happy Holidays” is appropriate. If you want to be a douche and say “Merry Christmas” to everyone starting on the day after Thanksgiving, knock yourself out.
Oh, and Target doesn’t actually forbid anyone from saying “Merry Christmas.” That’s another tall tale from O’Reilly and Gibson.
It was recently pointed in some article I was reading that Holidays is a contraction of Holy Days. Well, since Hannukah and Ramadan are in fact holy to those who celebrate them, Happy Holidays seems a fitting greeting for the season.
And as for the Target thing, I hadn’t heard that they weren’t allowed until my coworkers told me so. It amuses me that it’s a load of crap.