Merry Holiday!

Watching any TV lately?  Seeing a few commercials with Christmas trees, presents, music, sales, etc., right?  Have you heard the word “Christmas” even once?

I noticed this over the Thanksgiving Turkey Day weekend; while every retailer on the planet wants you to buy your Christmas presents from them, not one out of all of them will actually say the word “Christmas” in their ads.  To someone who wants things to make sense it's a little puzzling.  I mean, I began to get the feeling it was coming after how it seemed to pain people to say “Thanksgiving”, and then seeing the absurd commercials where people talked about being generically thankful for this, that or the other thing.  And of course, they have to be just generically “thankful”, because to go any further than that would mean to actually give thanks, and if you give thanks, there has to be an object of the giving.  So I kind of get it.  If we have to acknowledge to Whom we’re giving thanks, then we have to admit that this holiday isn’t just a day of feasting and getting together with family so that you remember why you don’t get together with your family very often.  (Uncle Fred got drunk again and did what this time?)

But the Christmas thing is another whole level of weird.  I mean, I suppose I could almost be convinced that it’s a matter of not wanting to offend the Jewish consumer who is buying Hannukah presents.  Well, no, not really.  See, while I see indications of Christmas in these commercials like trees, decorations, etc., what I never, never see is a menorah.  So no, it’s not for the sake of our Jewish compatriots that we’ve foregone mentioning the name of the holiday retailers depend upon annually for their very survival and profitability.  No, this is something else entirely.  There’s a wink and nod thing going on here that is just plain bizarre.  Yes, it’s Christmas.  Yes, we want you to buy your Christmas presents here.  Yes, the sale ends on December 25^th.  Yes, there’ll be a Santa in the store.  Yes, there will be gift-wrapping services available.  Yes you’ll hear Muzak versions of Christmas carols and songs on the overhead, vocal-less so as not to offend whoever it is that might be offended.

And... there it is.  Someone cares that someone thinks someone's going to be offended by Christmas.  Not offended enough, mind you, to avoid trampling and hospitalizing a total stranger in order to get $10 off some underwear that’s the wrong size at a store from which they wouldn’t even want people to know they got their underwear.  Not offended enough to refuse the annual Christmas bonus, should they be fortunate enough to work for a company that can still afford one.  Not offended enough to tell their family members that they’re going to stick with their convictions and no longer acquiesce to these blatantly religious holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas and just lay low until New Years.

How does this work?  The only way it can…  in someone’s imagination.  The imagined offense doesn’t actually exist, but in this hideously deformed politically correct culture we’ve developed where the phrase “too bad” is reserved strangely for the majority, any possible offense to anyone other than a Christian is imagined to be the real thing and therefore avoided at any cost.  The same people who balk at saying "Christmas" seem to have no similar problem saying “the holy month of Ramadan”.  The same mouths that can’t utter the name “Jesus Christ” except in the most offensive ways (but remember, if it’s Christians who will be offended it doesn’t count) seem to have no problem at all with “the prophet Mohammed”.

That pine tree with the lights on it isn’t a Hannukah tree or a Ramadan tree, it’s not a Kwanzaa tree either.  It’s a Christmas tree.  Don’t like it?  Too bad.  Oh, and Merry Christmas!