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Stop the insanity!!!
Dec. 24th, 2002 09:18 pmJeff and I went to Starbuck's for coffee this morning. Upon handing us our skinny mochas (Jeff's without whip, mine with), he recited the most bizarre salutation I have ever heard:
"Have a pleasant holiday, if you choose to celebrate."
I gaped at him in alarm, staggered back a few steps and turned to Jeff. "Merry Christmas?" I yelped.
This PC crap has got to end.
I am a practicing Pagan, and well aware that the solstice holidays were long ago usurped by this faux natal celebration. But that celebration was later elbowed out by a fat guy in a red suit, and Christmas is the most secular of "religious" holidays on the calendar. The non-Christian religions have made a major error in trying to pull away from it--encouraging the secular celebration of such universal values as family, friends, and unbridled greed could have shoved the nativity into footnote status in only a few years. Midnight Mass? That place you go to show off your spiffy new clothes and sing great songs! Yeah, there's some God talk, but no one can hear it over the howling babies anyway. Besides, it's completely optional.
Instead, the decision was made to re-religi-fy Christmas and get snotty about it. People shook their fist in protest, demanding that their own winter holidays be equally trivialized .
Congratulations; you've succeeded.
"Have a pleasant holiday,
if you choose to celebrate."
Have people really been so brittle at Starbucks? Have they snarled out that they are agnostic, athiest, Jehovah's Witness, Amish, and that a greeting as Have-a-nice-day innocuous as "Happy Holidays" is personally offensive to the extreme? Have they demanded to speak to managers, written to headquarters, notified the papers over this intrusive and judgmental greeting? I doubt it.
And anyone who would should be calmly told to go out in search of a life.
Jeff and I went from Starbuck's to Suncoast to exchange a mispurchased video. It was early, and hardly anyone was in the mall (yes, despite my vows to the contrary I did end up back in the mall for a few minutes today). The staff was in a punchy, raucous mood, and we were quickly riffing on each other as I searched for a replacement gift. A tall, robust redhead noticed my "stealth pentacle" and asked where I had purchased it, then asked if I was a pagan. Upon confirmation, he pulled out his Thor's Hammer and pronounced me "among friends."
When I finished my exchange that same booming voice wished me an unhesitant, "Merry Christmas!" Then he shrugged and said, "I assume you celebrate it, since you're getting gifts."
There we were, two people whose religious holiday was a few days ago, who generally don't get acknowledged in the "multicultural winter festivals," and who certainly don't have a National Pentagram on the Washington Mall between the National Christmas Tree and the National Menorah. And yet we are happy sharing the holiday of others. Because, hey, it's a happy time of year.
So Merry Christmas. And if you're offended by that, get fucking over it.
"Have a pleasant holiday, if you choose to celebrate."
I gaped at him in alarm, staggered back a few steps and turned to Jeff. "Merry Christmas?" I yelped.
This PC crap has got to end.
I am a practicing Pagan, and well aware that the solstice holidays were long ago usurped by this faux natal celebration. But that celebration was later elbowed out by a fat guy in a red suit, and Christmas is the most secular of "religious" holidays on the calendar. The non-Christian religions have made a major error in trying to pull away from it--encouraging the secular celebration of such universal values as family, friends, and unbridled greed could have shoved the nativity into footnote status in only a few years. Midnight Mass? That place you go to show off your spiffy new clothes and sing great songs! Yeah, there's some God talk, but no one can hear it over the howling babies anyway. Besides, it's completely optional.
Instead, the decision was made to re-religi-fy Christmas and get snotty about it. People shook their fist in protest, demanding that their own winter holidays be equally trivialized .
Congratulations; you've succeeded.
"Have a pleasant holiday,
if you choose to celebrate."
Have people really been so brittle at Starbucks? Have they snarled out that they are agnostic, athiest, Jehovah's Witness, Amish, and that a greeting as Have-a-nice-day innocuous as "Happy Holidays" is personally offensive to the extreme? Have they demanded to speak to managers, written to headquarters, notified the papers over this intrusive and judgmental greeting? I doubt it.
And anyone who would should be calmly told to go out in search of a life.
Jeff and I went from Starbuck's to Suncoast to exchange a mispurchased video. It was early, and hardly anyone was in the mall (yes, despite my vows to the contrary I did end up back in the mall for a few minutes today). The staff was in a punchy, raucous mood, and we were quickly riffing on each other as I searched for a replacement gift. A tall, robust redhead noticed my "stealth pentacle" and asked where I had purchased it, then asked if I was a pagan. Upon confirmation, he pulled out his Thor's Hammer and pronounced me "among friends."
When I finished my exchange that same booming voice wished me an unhesitant, "Merry Christmas!" Then he shrugged and said, "I assume you celebrate it, since you're getting gifts."
There we were, two people whose religious holiday was a few days ago, who generally don't get acknowledged in the "multicultural winter festivals," and who certainly don't have a National Pentagram on the Washington Mall between the National Christmas Tree and the National Menorah. And yet we are happy sharing the holiday of others. Because, hey, it's a happy time of year.
So Merry Christmas. And if you're offended by that, get fucking over it.
