{"id":15047,"date":"2014-11-07T06:15:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/i-take-offense-at-your-offense\/"},"modified":"2014-11-13T11:07:27","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T18:07:27","slug":"i-take-offense-at-your-offense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/i-take-offense-at-your-offense\/","title":{"rendered":"I Take Offense at Your Offense"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is tough for me to get through this season of \u201cChristmas creep\u201d. No, not the fact that Christmas<\/a> is so visible in the months before Thanksgiving<\/a>. I\u2019m sick of people complaining about it. In fact \u2014 I\u2019m offended. <\/p>\n

What really set me off is this guy in Canada griping about how Christmas decorations in stores<\/strong><\/a> somehow shows disrespect to Veterans. <\/p>\n

What a crock of Christmas<\/a> crap. <\/p>\n

My grandfather died fighting for the rights we have to express ourselves freely. He fought to celebrate Christmas<\/a> early, too, if that\u2019s what people want. It would be an offense to him to snuff Christmas<\/a> at any time. <\/p>\n

Same with my old man, who fought and survived in Vietnam. <\/p>\n

I called him when I saw that article and I asked him how, as a veteran, he felt about it. He said it was right in line with the attitude of some people he had to face coming home from Vietnam. He said people have lost their sense of freedom and patriotism. He says it no longer shocks him that people would want to take Christmas<\/a> away and blame vets for it at the same time. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad I wasn\u2019t the only one offended by this yahoo and his cockeyed idea of squelching Christmas<\/a> until after November 11th. <\/p>\n

Like Dad said, \u201cWhat is it they lay at the tomb of the unknown soldier? A wreath.\u201d Good point, Pops. <\/p>\n

But while we\u2019re at it there are plenty of other people out there off their nut about Christmas<\/a>. Already on Facebook I\u2019m seeing this silly graphic:<\/p>\n

\"merry\"<\/p>\n

Have you seen this? Stop sharing it. It offends me. <\/p>\n

Yes, I\u2019m talking to you Christmas<\/a> wingnuts. Yes, you Christians. Yes, you dummies who don\u2019t know what you\u2019re saying when you say \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Think real hard, o ye that get offended when you hear \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d<\/em>. The angels visiting the shepherds as they watched their fields by night didn\u2019t say \u201cMerry Christmas<\/a>!\u201d. They didn\u2019t say \u201cHappy Holidays!\u201d. They said \u201cPeace\u201d. What part of that don\u2019t you understand? <\/p>\n

The word \u201choliday\u201d is derived from the term \u201choly day\u201d. Think about that. Saying \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d is thus NOT an offense to anyone who keeps CHRISTmas<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Now, this term \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d, believe it or not, isn\u2019t the sweet, innocent little phrase we make it out to be. It hasn\u2019t always graced the lips of our wee ones at Christmas<\/a>. Our English language comes from, you guessed it kids, England. To \u201cmake merry\u201d in England means to get drunk. Maybe that is why for the past 1000 years or more they have said either \u201cHappy Christmas<\/a>!\u201d or \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d in jolly old England. <\/p>\n

Wise up, America. Christmas<\/a> isn\u2019t what you think it is. Stop making your ignorance go viral by passing the same silly graphic around every season. I\u2019ve seen the above graphic for 3 years now and it just gets worse and worse. IT is OFFENSIVE. <\/p>\n

It is offensive because believe it or not Christmas<\/a> is not an exclusive word to just the religious. <\/p>\n

The U.S. government didn\u2019t recognize Christmas<\/a> and make it a federal holiday because they were endorsing the sacred Christmas<\/a>. They did it because of secular reasons. Read the declaration making Christmas<\/a> a federal holiday in 1870. They just wanted the day off for federal workers. That\u2019s it. Secular as sin. Get over it. <\/p>\n

The American Santa<\/a>, Frosty, Rudolph, Christmas<\/a> trees \u2014 all secular. Irving Berlin, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand \u2014 all Jewish and all big Christmas<\/a> superstars. Why? Because secular Christmas<\/a> is a thing, unless you haven\u2019t read the news for the past 200 years. <\/p>\n

Most secular celebrants of Christmas<\/a> are totally fine hearing \u201cMerry Christmas<\/a>!\u201d or even saying the word \u201cChristmas\u201d. You might even hear them singing \u201cO Little Town of Bethlehem\u201d sometimes, if only for sentimental reasons. <\/p>\n

But even still, so what? If someone celebrates Hanukkah while you celebrate Christmas<\/a>, what are you going to do? Get up in their grill and say \u201cMerry Christmas<\/a>!\u201d? Of course not. When someone says \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d or \u201cSeasons Greetings\u201d to you they aren\u2019t aiming to offend. In fact, they are probably hoping NOT to offend. You should respect that. <\/p>\n

All this offense at Christmas<\/a> offends me. All this offense about Christmas<\/a> offends, me too. <\/p>\n

Peace<\/a>. It\u2019s what\u2019s for Christmas<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is tough for me to get through this season of \u201cChristmas creep\u201d. No, not the fact that Christmas is so visible in the months before Thanksgiving. I\u2019m sick of people complaining about it. In fact \u2014 I\u2019m offended. What really set me off is this guy in Canada griping about how Christmas decorations in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":22,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}