(no subject)
12/12/05 17:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyIt's interesting that the cries of "PC silliness! Christmas is banned!" seem to actually have replaced the annual cries of "Christmas is too commercial!"
Despite the really ridiculous news coverage, for as long as I can remember it's been the case that it's more polite to wish someone happy holidays unless you could make a reasonable guess about which holidays they actually celebrated. So it's by no means a new development... and an overblown one; even in my little town*, the holiday parade had floats from churches and public school students playing Christmas carols.
*The stereotypical Carrboro resident is a Pagan left-Democrat cyclist with a guitar and an interesting piercing. I say that with love. If you gotta live in North Carolina, it may as well be here.
(Hey, Meaghan, I should show you around Carrboro this winter break, if we've got time. Ne?)
But in the last few years (maybe ever since Bush's "Go out and spend money, or the terrorists win!" speech), it seems that it would be positively unpatriotic for religious conservatives to criticize the holiday celebrations based on the emphasis on shopping and presents rather than on the True Meaning of Christmas. So...they go instead for the semantics of 'holiday' versus 'Christmas,' I suppose, and the politics of public displays.
But then, it makes sense that when you get a religious holiday and a commercial holiday on the same day, and overlapping each other in inconvenient ways, this sort of thing's bound to happen.
Despite the really ridiculous news coverage, for as long as I can remember it's been the case that it's more polite to wish someone happy holidays unless you could make a reasonable guess about which holidays they actually celebrated. So it's by no means a new development... and an overblown one; even in my little town*, the holiday parade had floats from churches and public school students playing Christmas carols.
*The stereotypical Carrboro resident is a Pagan left-Democrat cyclist with a guitar and an interesting piercing. I say that with love. If you gotta live in North Carolina, it may as well be here.
(Hey, Meaghan, I should show you around Carrboro this winter break, if we've got time. Ne?)
But in the last few years (maybe ever since Bush's "Go out and spend money, or the terrorists win!" speech), it seems that it would be positively unpatriotic for religious conservatives to criticize the holiday celebrations based on the emphasis on shopping and presents rather than on the True Meaning of Christmas. So...they go instead for the semantics of 'holiday' versus 'Christmas,' I suppose, and the politics of public displays.
But then, it makes sense that when you get a religious holiday and a commercial holiday on the same day, and overlapping each other in inconvenient ways, this sort of thing's bound to happen.