I’m tired of being politically correct about Christmas. It’s a holiday—it’s not the crusades, or an attempt to convert the masses or offend those of a different religion, and while the letters in Santa can certainly be switched around to spell S-A-T-A-N, that’s really not the point. All these schools and towns who are afraid of offending someone with a decorated tree or Christmas cheer? Pfft on you! Pfft!
Of course, there are other people who say this much better than me. People like seldear, who is very eloquent on the subject, or Holly Lisle who says:
Food for thought as we approach the most visible holiday of the American year: Christmas.
“A fairly new tactic in the Christmas wars can be called the sensitive person’s veto. In 2000, the city of Eugene, Ore., banned Christmas trees on public property, then allowed firefighters to put up a tree on Christmas Eve and Christmas, with the provision that if one person objected, the tree had to come down. The next year, Kensington, Md., banned Santa Claus from a tree-lighting ceremony because of two complaints. So the city’s most sensitive person was, in effect, allowed to make policy. The sensitivity argument—that any reference to Christmas at all might make someone feel bad—is responsible for the spread of the anti-Christmas campaign from religious symbols to the purely secular and harmless trappings of the season, including red poinsettias, red-and-green cookies, holiday lights, and Rudolph the reindeer. Santa Claus, originally based on a Christian saint but no more religious than Kermit the Frog, is considered much too divisive and hurtful to non-Christian students in many schools.” –John Leo
I’m not a Christian. Not a big fan of that religion, or of any religion, for that matter. But in solidarity with Christians who have come under attack for their faith in this country where the freedom to practice one’s religion in peace has come to mean “one’s religion, so long as it is not Christianity,” I wish you this year a politically incorrect, Constitutionally protected Merry Christmas.
If that delights you, good. Remember what freedom is, and pass it on. And I hope your holiday is wonderful.
If that offends you, tough cookies. Perhaps the ones too cruddy for Santa to eat.
Which is exactly how I feel. I’m not a big fan of organized religion, nor am I particularly devout, but this is supposed to be a free country. Why can’t we all get along?