What is so Offensive About The Word Christmas?
The only thing that irritated me more then spending last Christmas in the hospital was watching the television ads avoid using the word Christmas. Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, Joyous Season, Etc. I haven’t done any research on the matter, but I doubt Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and Eid ul-Adha (The Muslim Festival of the Sacrifice) Gifts approach 10% of the gift sales from November 25th to December 31st. Retailers make a majority of their profits for the year because of the holiday Christmas. As I heard someone say earlier tonight…retailers should be grateful for the capitalist tradition known as Christmas.
I am not religious, but the avoidance of retailers to acknowledge that people are purchasing Christmas gifts is starting to really irritate me. I surely am not alone. Where I come from we celebrate December 25th (aka Christmas) by decorating the house with Christmas gifts, buying and giving Christmas gifts, placing those Christmas gifts under the Christmas Tree wrapped in Christmas wrapping, singing Christmas Carols, and eating a Christmas Ham. Do you notice a pattern?
I wouldn’t mind if only some retailers were participating in this denial of Christmas…I would just shop in places that openly celebrated Christmas. But I am finding it nearly impossible to find retailers that openly solicit Christmas shoppers without hiding behind the euphemisms of modern advertising that use any and every word in place of Christmas. Why? Look at the ads for Macys, Walmart, Costco, Lowes, Best Buy, Sears, etc.; none of them mention the obvious. My anger has reached terminal velocity with this past week. I went through the entire Thanksgiving paper looking through the ads and found it near impossible to find the word Christmas. Christmas Trees are now Holiday Trees or Fir Trees, Christmas Cards are now holiday cards, Christmas ornaments are now holiday ornaments. WTF? By now you have all seen the Lowes banner that advertises Holiday Trees in English but Christmas Trees in Spanish…
The funny part is that when you go in the store you can’t find a holiday tree stand…they only sell Christmas Tree stands. It seems that the manufacturers haven’t received the advertising censorship if the word Christmas. What do you want to bet that this problem will be resolved next year….when Lowes forces the stand manufacturers to call them ‘Holiday Tree Stands’?
Not even Middle Americas Retailer of Choice is immune to this Christmas-removal disease. In the newspaper advertisements Christmas trees are called 6-1/2-Foot Pre-Lit Artificial Colorado Pine Trees…
However, the webmaster in Texas didn’t get the message; he still calls the same trees Christmas Trees. Someone is going to get fired over this breech!
Here is the famous Holiday Card section of the Walmart Thanksgiving ad…
Notice that all of the boxes say the word Christmas or have Christian religous symbols on the front. Nope not Christmas cards…holiday cards…yep. Blech!
The funny part is that the word ‘holiday’ has its roots in religious ‘holy-days’. I bet Michael Newdow is organizing the lawsuit as we speak.
Update: Reuters has it wrong; Christian conservatives aren’t the only ones upset about the renaming of everything Christmas.
More Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, …
Update II:
Desenting opinions can be found here, here, here, and …
The gem below can be found here…
No offense, but F@#! Xmas and christians too.
My job is gone because Bush cut research budgets, hey why do research when jesus tells you what to do.
My ‘tax break’ was eaten up by higher energy costs and my kid losing his Pell grant. His future is gone because of a record deficit. Mu cousin is gone because he died looking for non existent WMDs.
I had cable, theoretically 1040 hours of programming per day. Over 10% of that was christian,(would have been much higher but even those channels have infomercials), during the hollow days it was upped to 37.5% . So bill o’reilly thinks people of MY faith, or any other faith besides christofascists control the media!?
I still helped my neighbors dig out of their snow banks, and didn’t charge them for my labor. Guess I’m not ready to be an american, even tho I was born here, as were 3 generations previous.
Bitter? Let’s see, no presents for my family, no heat at home, losing my job, dirty air, undrinkable water, no future for me and my surviving children, deaths in the family due to war criminals.
Yep, bitter doesn’t even come close.So you’re upset because I said ‘happy holidays’ instead of ‘merry christmas’?
Christ was one of the greatest philosophers ever known to this planet, but God, please save me from your followers!
on December 5th, 2005 at 7:00 am
Dillard’s in Florida had a big one page Christmas sale ad in the Orlando Sentinel last week. I am spending some money at Dillards.
I called a Dillard’s store and told them I would be spending money there just because of their ad. I then called the regional office responsible for the ad and told them the same.
I am boycotting any stores that leave out Christmas. They are insulting me while at the same time they are begging me to spend my money there.
If more people boycotted these stores the trend would quickly change.
on December 20th, 2005 at 9:11 am
I am soooo happy to see I am not the only person totally irritated by this. I am not by anyone’s definition a religious person, but Christmas is and always has been Christmas. Regardless of whether you see it as the Ule holiday for giving or the Christian holiday for celebrating the birth of Jesus, it is still a holiday that has been celebrated for centuries, and why try to ignore it now?
on January 30th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Though it is well past Christmas, I, a choir teacher am still being told that on next year’s Christmas Concert, the word “Christmas” must be removed. Our school board is agreement about our balance of sacred music mixed with some secular music. They are up in arms way about the word “Christmas” being on the program. I have searched for many court cases about using the word Christmas but I come up empty handed. All the court cases that I have seen deal with the music or prayer in public school. If anyone has information about the legality of the word Christmas in a program title - PLEASE email me.
rfarsdale@underwood.k12.mn.us Thank you very much. Roger
on November 14th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
The lack of the word Christmas is just another attempt to be politically correct. Such effort is put into being politically correct. But if you take time to think about it, it has gotten to be that Politically Correct is just another way to say that “we have an opinion that is so far out there, that if you don’t agree with it, you must be a bigot.”
It has gotten so bad that being labeled as a Christian has a major negative stigma attached to it. Let’s not forget that historically, the most influential people in America’s history have not only been Christian, but they made reference to it regularly: Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E Lee, to name a few.
Basically it comes down to this. Christians in other countries have gone through real persecution. This is just the beginning of what kind of persecution Christians will have to come to expect. The problem is that it is coming from our own country. Jesus said in no uncertain terms that we will be persecuted, what an honor.
on November 30th, 2007 at 10:13 am
I am an elected City Councilman serving as Mayor this year, and I am absolutely offended that we are now calling our city Christmas Tree a “Holiday Tree”. In addition, I have just received our 8-page city newsletter and it has been scrubbed clean of the word “Christmas”. Oh yes, there are the usual illustrations and symbols associated with Christmas, but the word - forget it. The newsletter has been sterilized. Oh look - they forgot one - in the calendar they actually call Dec. 25 - “Christmas Day”.
I have every intention of getting this put on the agenda as a council Study-Session item for discussion - when I brought this up at a previous council meeting, I was told by staff that the removal of the word “Christmas” is federally mandated. Yet I cannot find any ruling anywhere.
Is this a Liberal thing, a right-wing conspiracy thing, an ACLU thing, or is it another of those stupid “let’s be politically correct” and upset the majority of U.S. citizens and its visitors and perpetrated by a few sour-pusses who chose to overlook the REALLY important issues that are threatening this country.
Notice that I said “Councilman” not “Council Member” or “Council Person”. When I served on the planning commission, I insisted on being called “Chairman” not “Chair” or “Chair Person”. I am not a piece of f*****g furniture or chair-moving man.
God, give me strength to stand up to stupidity.
Merry Christmas everyone - yes, even to the stupid politically-correct people.
on October 8th, 2009 at 6:45 am
In Australia a while back people were interfering with Christmas and Easter because they had this silly political correct attitude that it might affend people of other faiths whom don’t celebrate these times of year. Thus we ended up with a couple of people whom refused to hang any Christmas or Easter decoration in their store. I thought this was so insulting to Christians, when other faiths whom migrated to Australia seemed to appear to have free range at celebrating their religious seasons. Anyway their was such a scream about this attitude all over Australia in anger. Whether anything was done about such anti-christmas sentiments, is another thing I did not hear much about.