Have a Great Holiday!  The first time I heard that this year it had nothing to do with the impending Christmas/Hanukkah competition.  It was delivered by a bar customer of mine in reference to Thanksgiving Day.  Then it was repeated by just about everyone else who wished me to enjoy the big November celebration. Perhaps one other person besides myself actually used the phrase “Have a Happy Thanksgiving” with maybe a couple more spitting out the somewhat irritating “Happy Turkey Day”.  Have a Great Holiday? They might as well have said “Merry Last Fourth Thursday of November” just to ensure the greeting was safe, sterilized and fully devoid of meaning. It seems as though political correctness and religious hypersensitivity has worked its way backward through the calendar to engulf a holiday which doesn’t actually have a specific religious connection.

Forget the implications of the first Thanksgiving feast – Pilgrims offering  thanks to the Christian god for new homes on the South Shore and not being dead like half the people who boarded the Mayflower in England.   By the time Abe Lincoln designated it a National Holiday in 1863* it was simply meant to be a day for celebrating the stuff we’re grateful for, like new vacation homes in California and not being dead like half the people drafted into the civil war. The only cultural affiliation necessary to the holiday is to be living in the US by the time dinner is served.  The only people we should be showing sensitivity towards are the folks who didn’t get the day off from work.

(*I know lots of these amazing facts because my son was in a Thanksgiving play a few weeks ago.  I also learned that Abraham Lincoln was 3 ½ feet tall, lisped and spoke in rhymes. And that Myles Standish was a black kid.)

So the point here is that the struggle for people to show sensitivity towards every living thing, or at least not to offend anyone, had long ago gotten kinda stupid.  Now it’s pathetic. And it wasn’t just Thanksgiving – anybody notice how schools dropped Halloween from the vocabulary this year?  Around here it became “Orange and Black Day” which I think was intended to comfort the two Jehovah’s Witness kids from the practices of a first grader who worships Satan.  Brace yourself folks:  the holiday calendar is under threat of reprinting.  Won’t be long before those crybaby wood choppers get Arbor Day renamed to National Lumberjack Income Day.

And that brings us to the target of this post:  All across the country states and municipalities are ditching Nativity scenes and axing “Christmas Tree” in favor of “Holiday” Tree.  This extra push by local governments may have something to do with the White House switch to Holiday Trees this year (not true, just a rumor spread by the responsible reporters at Fox News and Pals)  But it doesn’t matter who started this silly trend – it’s misguided and actually does more interfaith/cross-cultural/me-vs.-stupid-you damage than leaving the Christmas association fully intact.

How about taking a level headed look at the traditional conifer of the Yuletide.  What is it? Well let’s start with what it isn’t:  It’s not a Burning Cross, it’s not a Swastika strung with colored lights, a Koran on fire or a Kwanzaa Flag hung upside down.  It’s a Christmas Tree. And regardless of the origin of Christmas celebrations the message of the season is straightforward – Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Man. Not just Christian Man – any man, including wo-mans. And since the Earth is not covered with Christians that Peace is wished upon everyone. EVERYONE.  I don’t give a crap what a few loudmouthed southern Protestant jackasses feel about the rest of everybody else – the most basic principle of Christianity, straight from the mouth of the dude who started it, is that peace and love are universal.  Everyone deserves it.  And I don’t really mind people saying Happy Holidays (so along as they say it in Decemeber…) but when I see someone who’s never even owned a crucifix, and tell them to have a Merry Christmas it’s simply that.  It’s not a suggestion they buy themselves a plastic lawn Nativity and start cuddling up to Baby Jesus. It’s a sincere wish for a time of love and a break from the tiring struggles, and strife, which tangle us all year round. One doesn’t need God for Christmas – but you do need a sense of humanity. And that can be found in anyone.

So skip a Nativity Scene?  Call a tinseled pine a Holiday Tree? That’s asinine. Try this instead: put up a brightly lit Menorah for Hannukah.  Stick a Kwanza thing in the Rose Garden when it’s time.  Celebrate Ramadan on the White House Lawn – that’s how you celebrate our diversity.  You don’t do it by masking the customs of one group. What public officials, as well as too much of the US population at large, don’t get is that you don’t have to water down any traditional symbol of peace and acceptance.  Matter of fact,  if anything it leads to more division between faiths and cultures. Predatory media companies will leverage that for political gain by setting fire to the foaming mouths of those aforementioned Protestant jackasses.  And they’ll eventually draw less temperamental folks into the fray and the Christian public at large will misdirect its anger and lay blame on the wrong people.  Can’t wait for the news to report that Al Qaeda has enlisted Arab-Americans in its plans to eradicate Douglas firs. Unfortunately, too many people aren’t that smart, enlightened or evolved and making Christmas “less offensive” to others only drives some “Christians” towards over-defense of the holiday and bellyfuls of hate. It’s such an unnecessary mucking up of a season meant for joy to all.

So let’s stop fucking this all up.  Don’t be afraid to say Merry Christmas to anybody.  And don’t forget to wish a Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa or Ramadan to those who celebrate those traditions.  If the sincerity is in your heart than you can easily fall back on the tried and true “Happy Holidays To You Sir!”

But if I catch you saying that to me come next Labor Day I’m going to stuff a beach umbrella up your…er, sorry about that.

Merry Christmas and Peace to Everyone!

Fun to write these things but funner to read your comments – drop one below.

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