Is it cereal or is it fruit salad?
Christmas has been on my mind lately, possibly because it’s less than a month away. I’ve been trying to decide what I want to call this time of year. In England this was never a problem, everyone called it Christmas and I never thought twice about it. We heard rumours that those silly Americans called it “the holidays” but that was dismissed as another one of those vulgar Americanisms.
Now though, I’m not so sure. Why should I keep calling it Christmas when I’m not a Christian? Why risk offending those with other belief systems? I’ve tried avoiding that by calling it Xmas, but Xmas comes from the Greek for Christ starting with X so that’s no good. I thought about referring to it as the Winter Solstice, but scientific as that might be, it has a definite new-age sound to it. So it looks like I’m stuck with “the holiday season” which is bland and ambiguous and has a similar effect on me as fingernails on a blackboard. Oh well.
I don’t get it. I simply don’t. Are you really so worried about people so oversensitive that you have to stop using a word like Christmas. How can it possibly offend anyone what you call a particular holiday? The word isn’t derogatory in any sense. It makes a reference to some religion, but that hardly disqualifies it from use.
You say yourself “the holiday season” sucks. I honestly think you’re doing both yourself and your community a disservice by trying to be so neutral. In the end, nothing we say or do can mean anything because “it might offend someone”.
You’ve grown up calling this time of year Christmas. For Christ’s sake, keep using that word!
Well its not just about offending other people, it’s about projecting my own beliefs. I’m not a Christian (telling me to do something for Christ’s sake won’t work
), so why should I continue perpetuating the Christian celebration when I just want it to be a celebration for the heck of it? I grew up calling my religion Christianity too, and I abandoned that, so I figure I should abandon the trappings.
Living in a city where there are probably as many Jews, Muslims and Hindus as there are Christians just gives me another reason to make the change. Maybe I should combine all the festivals and call it Chrishannukivalimadan.
What about Chrimbo? Or how about “Gifty Saturday”? (change accordingly each year)
Interesting. That does leave you with a dilemma about Easter too. And Halloween. And Whitsun (alright, that’s usually just the May Bank Holiday these days, I think only my Mum still refers to it as Whitsuntide). I think these days the actual meaning of Christmas has been sufficiently eroded so that the use of the word is broadly acceptable in most circumstances. If you’re still uncomfortable with it you could always use “the festive season”. Well, it works for me, anyway.
Easter and Halloween I can live with. Easter comes from Austron, a goddess of fertility, and I have no problem celebrating fertility. Halloween was also pagan, and nowadays is just an excuse for candy. Whitsun I never understood anyway, we just got a day off and had a street parade for no apparent reason.
Festivus for the rest of us.