MissileMan
Senior Member
- Sep 11, 2004
- 2,939
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Merlin1047 said:Sure do. How about a kerry/edwards bumper sticker?
Humorous, but I know that you know that not all democrats are atheists.
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Merlin1047 said:Sure do. How about a kerry/edwards bumper sticker?
Goodbye Christmas?
Charles Krauthammer (archive)
"Holiday celebrations where Christmas music is being sung make people feel different, and because it is such a majority, it makes the minority feel uncomfortable.''
-- Mark Brownstein, parent, Maplewood, N.J., supporting the school board's banning of religious music from holiday concerts.
"You want my advice? Go back to Bulgaria.''
-- Humphrey Bogart, in "Casablanca.''
WASHINGTON -- It is Christmas time, and what would Christmas be without the usual platoon of annoying pettifoggers rising annually to strip Christmas of any Christian content. With some success:
School districts in New Jersey and Florida ban Christmas carols. The mayor of Somerville, Mass., apologizes for ``mistakenly'' referring to the town's ``holiday party'' as a ``Christmas party.'' The Broward and Fashion malls in South Florida put up a Hanukkah menorah but no nativity scene. The manager of one of the malls explains: Hanukkah commemorates a battle and not a religious event, although he hastens to add ``I really don't know a lot about it.'' He does not. Hanukkah commemorates a miracle, and there is no event more ``religious'' than a miracle.
The attempts to de-Christianize Christmas are as absurd as they are relentless. The United States today is the most tolerant and diverse society in history. It celebrates all faiths with an open heart and open-mindedness that, compared to even the most advanced countries in Europe, are unique.
Yet more than 80 percent of Americans are Christian and probably 95 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. Christmas Day is an official federal holiday, the only day of the entire year when, for example, the Smithsonian museums are closed. Are we to pretend that Christmas is nothing but an orgy of commerce in celebration of ... what? The winter solstice?
I personally like Christmas because, as a day that for me is otherwise ordinary, I get to do nice things, such as covering for as many gentile colleagues as I could when I was a doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital. I will admit that my generosity had its rewards: I collected enough chits on Christmas Day to get reciprocal coverage not just for Yom Kippur, but for both days of Rosh Hashana and my other major holiday, Opening Day at Fenway.
Mind you, I've got nothing against Hanukkah, although I am constantly amused -- and gratified -- by how American culture has gone out of its way to inflate the importance of Hanukkah, easily the least important of Judaism's seven holidays, into a giant event replete with cards, presents and public commemorations as a creative way to give Jews their Christmas equivalent.
Some Americans get angry at parents who want to ban carols because they tremble that their kids might feel ``different'' and ``uncomfortable'' should they, God forbid, hear Christian music sung at their school. I feel pity. What kind of fragile religious identity have they bequeathed their children that it should be threatened by exposure to carols?
I'm struck by the fact that you almost never find Orthodox Jews complaining about a Christmas creche in the public square. That is because their children, steeped in the richness of their own religious tradition, know who they are and are not threatened by Christians celebrating their religion in public. They are enlarged by it.
It is the more deracinated members of religious minorities, brought up largely ignorant of their own traditions, whose religious identity is so tenuous that they feel the need to be constantly on guard against displays of other religions -- and who think the solution to their predicament is to prevent the other guy from displaying his religion, rather than learning a bit about their own.
To insist that the overwhelming majority of this country stifle its religious impulses in public so that minorities can feel ``comfortable'' not only understandably enrages the majority, but commits two sins. The first is profound ungenerosity toward a majority of fellow citizens who have shown such generosity of spirit toward minority religions.
The second is the sin of incomprehension -- a failure to appreciate the uniqueness of the communal American religious experience. Unlike, for example, the famously tolerant Ottoman Empire or the generally tolerant Europe of today, America does not merely allow minority religions to exist at its sufferance. It celebrates and welcomes and honors them.
America transcended the idea of mere toleration in 1790 in Washington's letter to the Newport synagogue, one of the lesser known glories of the Founding: ``It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.''
More than two centuries later, it is time that members of religious (and anti-religious) minorities, as full citizens of this miraculous republic, transcend something too: petty defensiveness.
Merry Christmas. To all.
Thornton said:Whooooaaaaa people.
Look the 1st post was made by Merlin1047 and I questioned his point so I'd know what it was and he told me in the next post. HE WAS UPSET AT MACY'S not the ACLU or anyone else, for changing to Happy Holiday greetings.
Gem said:menewa,
Of course Macy's has a right to put up the sign they feel is right for their business...I haven't heard anyone here argue otherwise. However, Macy's put up Merry Christmas signs for years...the store was the basis for the famous movie, "Miracle on 34th Street" which was about Santa Claus existing and making Christmas real for the citizens of New York...it only changed its tune after a small number of people complained...
Macy's did NOT change to be more inclusive. Although I find such naively optimistic opinions heartening, they simply are not truthful...they changed because a small but vocal group of people were whining.
I have no problem with someone saying "Happy Holidays," rather than "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Chanukah." What I DO take issue with is people, stores, etc. being forced to change things they have done for decades because a vocal minority feels "offended" that 96% of people in the US celebrate a holiday they don't like.
Merlin1047 said:Clean up your act.
The excessive vulgarity in your post is inappropriate and uncalled for.
Thornton said:LMAO. Is that how you *debate* when someone points out the truth is a thread you made?
Can you please verify what your position originally was about Macy's? People now seem to think the government is involved somehow. ???
Hey other posters! This is about Macy's changing Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays and some people being offended and wanting to boycott! No government attack or ACLU attack I see. just a good business decision.
Thornton said:LMAO. Is that how you *debate* when someone points out the truth is a thread you made?
Can you please verify what your position originally was about Macy's? People now seem to think the government is involved somehow. ???
Hey other posters! This is about Macy's changing Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays and some people being offended and wanting to boycott! No government attack or ACLU attack I see. just a good business decision.
Bonnie said:So pissing off the majority to make the minority happy is just sound business policy?? Yes that makes a lot of sense to me??? Btw I have a relative that works at Macy's corporate and she tells me Macy's sales are down 28% so far during the "Holiday season"