So much controversy whirling around this year. We have people whinging and protesting and boycotting because certain companies and individuals are replacing “Christmas” with “holiday”. I’d be more inclined to believe their religious commitment to the holiday if they protested its celebration by a nation full of retailers. Hey, if America hadn’t insisted on turning it into a merchandising free-for-all, we wouldn’t have had to turn Hanukkah into a big deal, create Kwanzaa, and make it into one big all-inclusive “holiday season”. Honestly, I saw a letter to the editor in one newspaper where a woman refused to buy “holiday” M&Ms, because they were green and red, Christmas colors, and she would not buy them ever again until they either included blue and white for Hanukkah, and black for Kwanzaa. She may not realize it, but she’s on to something. You want to celebrate Christmas, “put Christ back in Christmas”, anything along those lines, then turn it back into a religious holiday, stop buying all the stuff (not just the M&Ms. . .the decorations, the trees, the obscenely huge number of presents nobody wants anyway) and start celebrating with midnight services and a small family observance. There would be a huge sigh of relief! Christians would get their holiday back. Jews could go back to observing Hanukkah instead of celebrating it, reinstating the high holy days as the important days on the calendar. Non-Christians would no longer have to deal with feeling obligated to celebrate a holiday that’s not theirs, or give or receive greetings that have no meaning to them, and it sure would make shopping for December birthdays a heck of a lot easier.
Dec9