The Holiday Which Must Not Be Named

So I spent all yesterday trapped indoors after a horrendous ice storm incapacitated our travels. After purging and organizing 2 rooms (whew!), I decided to look at some recent news online. I got annoyed, as usual, at the prolific use of the word "holidays" when we all know that everyone is talking about.....CHRISTMAS! Yes, Christmas, the Judeo-Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus. Santa and all that. A bonafide federal holiday! Yet, no one will say it aloud.

It takes a whooooole lot to offend me, and the fact that people are so afraid of saying Merry Christmas does the trick. So do set-ups mocking Christmas and all it means to people of faith. The icing on the cake was a story about how a group is planning a nativity with two Marys and two Josephs in order to be provocative and show what things would be like had Mary and Joseph been homosexual. Well, as far as we know they weren't. And what is the point? I am an advocate of free speech, and these people are free to do what they wish, and I am free to not go look at it. I can hear the cries of homophobia now - but I am not a homophobic. I am just proud of the history of my faith system and it saddens me to see it turned into a political statement.

But I started thinking about how Christmas and Christians are allowed to be diminished and disrespected in ways that no other religion or observance is allowed to be. What if, during Eid, someone thought to set up a display with 2 Mohammads? There would be outcry and fighting in the streets.

Who, really, would be harmed by a little wave and a Merry Christmas? If someone said Happy Hannukah to me, I wouldn't mind. Happy Kwanzaa? Sure - even though no one really knows what it is, and it was kind of made up in the 60s by a guy who spent time in prison for brutally torturing and beating two women in the early 1970s and is a Marxist/secular progressive....

But I digress. I love Christmas. I love shopping for gifts and finding unique things for people I love. The music is wonderful, the decorations lovely, the story timeless. I look forward every year to the 24-hour A Christmas Story marathon. It's the simple things that bring joy this time of year, and let's face it. It's because of Christmas.