It's the Christmas season. It's our culture. We exist, too, and the brainwashing involved in getting folks to think "Happy Holidays" is, imho, an "anti-Christian culture" initiative.
From Advent (anticipating the coming of the Lord) through Christmas (celebrating the coming of the Lord) is, given the year, in the neighborhood of 40 days long. It is always the 4 Sundays preceding Christmas and the 12 days of Christmas. It's been that way throughout our Christian culture for centuries.
Hannukah is an 8 days celebration based on a lunar calendar that could go from late November to early December. This year it's from the 8th-15th of December.
Is it the basis of all these traditions you see in our culture? Does it inform Santa Claus (St Nicholas), mangers, wise men, in any way whatsoever? No. It does not.
This cultural celebration is about Christmas. The traditions are founded in Christianity and the Christmas story.
Refusing to permit employees to say Merry Christmas, to have "holiday trees", holiday lights, holiday cards, and on an on is pure opposition to our Christian culture and an unwillingness to acknowledge our presence, all of which is part of a brain-washing program.
It was supposedly to make shops more inviting to people from cultures that don’t commonly celebrate Christmas.
I find it hard to be doctrinaire or dogmatic. Even those who ask clerks to keep “Merry Christmas” greetings to people they are pretty sure will appreciate it, can still have very obvious Christmas displays and pipe carols over their PA systems. A little common sense will go a long way.
Actually a lot of the traditions are from pagan cultures. You ever wonder why the tree chosen to celebrate a birth in the mid-east is a pine? Ever wonder what Yule is and why it has a log?
The simple fact of the matter is there’s good reasons to call it “the holiday season”, in between this Thursday and the Tuesday seven weeks from now there’s a whole bunch of holidays from multiple religions and secular life.
Even the gift buying, depending on who you know could have nothing to do with Christianity. Most of the folks on my shopping list are Jews and atheists. The only regular church goer on my list is the mother-in-law, and she’s not really even on my list, the wife shops for her. The wife and I like to decorate, but the decorations are geared towards pretty light, with a lot of pepper themes because we’re in the southwest and like peppers both in our belly and on your walls and fence. I buy holiday lights and send out holiday cards, I don’t do the tree thing though, holiday or otherwise.
Nobody is failing to acknowledge your presence. But maybe you should be acknowledging the presence of others. The percentage of folks who do Christmas the way you do is pretty small, you share the next 6 weeks with millions of people who don’t advent, and don’t really Christmas.
exactly
It is Christmas it is a federal holiday, we purchase because of Christmas and if they cannot say Christmas then so be it, they do not get my Christmas money.
For those who like I have just read you guys need to stop pinning yourselves to a cross, well I do not go to church I respect what this country was founded on and what holidays were celebrated way back.
Seems those who dont;see a bigger picture here is are the same folks who think Christianity is stupid and homosexuals marrying is alright
I mail Christmas cards, I wish people a Merry Christmas, and I don’t care if they respond or not. I live in a area that is somewhat rural, with towns here and there. When people encounter you in stores, hospitals, the mainstreets in towns, ANYWHERE, they say hello to you. I moved to this area from the western suburbs of Chicago, and I have never encountered people who were more warm and cordial than the area I now live in. It is a good feeling to freely express warm greeting, and Merry Christmas is just one example. Life is also a little slower in these areas and I thank God I have found this area at this time of my life...slower in pace, I might add, but NOT in technology. I do not miss for one minute the cold, indifferent, hysterical pace of people that I have left behind. And with that I will say Merry Christmas AFTER Thanksgiving, and maybe I will add the message from Tiny Tim and that is “God bless us everyone.”