"Merry Christmas": A Racist Term?

Might not seem obvious, but the mere use of "Merry Christmas" could be a racist, or a bigoted statement. Don't follow? Walk through a mall, a crowded park or down a busy city street. How many are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddists, Native American, or any one of a number of smaller religions. Who prefers Hannukah, Kwanza, or nothing at all. To assume that all of those folks celebrate or recognize Christmas as "their" holiday is a bit obnoxious and at the very least bigoted.

How many folks do you meet any given day that you can be certain are Christians who recognize Christmas on December 25th? Orthodox Christians celebrate the holiday in January. Even if the only folks you meet are White(you should get out more)there is no guarantee they are the "right" sort of white Christians. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, for example, are as white as the driven snow. I know a fair number of them and they love the "Holidays" without prostrating themselves on the Christmas alter.

Does that make Bill O'Reilly and others racists and bigots? I have my own views on the topic. As a white guy I've watched racism evolve from the overt hatred of the 60's.Righties back then also called ML King Jr. and "uppity" blacks fighting for Civil Rights part of a communist/bolshevik conspiracy. That refrain sound familiar? These days it is slick and carefully polished. It doesn't use the "N" word to degrade blacks, it discusses in couched and measured terms racial and social issues intended to show blacks in a bad or degraded light.

So is "Merry Christmas" a racist term? depends. How's that for an answer? Depends on how and who you use the term to. If it is for the guy from your church, probably not. If you're shoving it down someone's throat as part of the so-called "war on Christmas" you might be a a racist.

WAR ON CHRISTMAS? YES! YES! GOD, YES!

A war on Christmas, you say? Sign me up, and do it fast. Dear God, I wish I had enlisted a week before Halloween, when stores were already putting up Christmas decorations! Are you kidding? It is an awful distraction when I'm trying to focus on my pagan holiday for the undead. Never mind that the spirit of giving on Halloween has a character above and beyond what Christmas has become in this great nation (The magic of being a supreme cynic is you never really know when I'm being sarcastic).

We need a war on Christmas just to keep it sane. We need to draw deep and definitive battle lines before the hyper-commerciality and an uber-pushy element within the Christian community overruns what sanity still exists in this country. Roll bndages, man the trenches and keep Christmas where it needs to be.

No one is seriously calling for the eradication of the holiday. That's a made up antagonism by manipulative Republicrooks. Their blathering about greeting folks with "Happy Holidays" rather than some Nazi-esque commandment to retort a dutiful "Merry Christmas," is a cannard. That's right, I said cannard, and I am not even 50! But seriously, October for Christmas stuff? We start getting forecasts for Christmas retail sales in freakin' August! August!

I have Jewish friends who find Christmas a secondary holiday to Hannukah, and Muslim and non-Christian immigrant friends who dig the festive, family nature of the holidays, beginning at Thanksgiving and ending on New Years, when all normal people are by then exhausted, depressed, broke and fat! So it is "Happy Holidays," Christmas being just one among them.

People, I am seeing Christmas decorations in houses already, and now, with all of these shopping holidays, like Black Friday and the Christmas gift return period(A whole other set of hypocrisies) Christmas is like a fungus or the Blob-the good one with Steve Mcqueen; it just keep growing and growing and...

Each year we, as a nation, are whipped into more and more of a fervor to spend and spend and spend. It isn't about family and giving anymore, it has become a matter of national economic survival. Frenzied crowds assault, trample and even kill one another over marketed campaigns for the latest "must-have" toy.

Enough already! Sigh me up and ship me to the front. Christmas doesn't have to go, but it has certainly proved enough of a nuasance that it must be faced and battled back to what it is supposed to be. Not sure any more what that is? Might I suggest A Christmas Carol, the original classic from 1938, with Reginald Owen. Better yet, gather the family and read the book together(A guy nmed Dickens wrote it).