<p>“Hey, how about those Redskins?”</p>
<p>“Just because I live in D.C. doesn’t mean I support the Redskins. In fact, many people support other teams, and anyway I object to blah blah blah.”</p>
<p>LOL, Hunt.</p>
<p>I guess we should say “Hey, how about that NFL?” No wait, that might offend hockey fans. I guess we should say “Hey, how about those professional athletes?” Oh, wait not everyone is into sports. Maybe there just isn’t anything we can celebrate without someone feeling left out.</p>
<p>People often tell me “God bless you” when I put a dollar in a donation box, or when I sneeze. They do this because they wish me well. I don’t believe it’s polite for me to respond by telling them that I’m agnostic, and that I don’t appreciate their assumption that everyone believes in God and needs blessing. </p>
<p>I’m not going to throw kindness back in a stranger’s face because it comes in a form that doesn’t apply to me.</p>
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<p>Thanks Hanna, you said it much better than I did. </p>
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<p>Fine. So if someone says “Merry Christmas” why don’t you just reply “Have a great holiday,” and be done with it? Your assumption that they are ignorant because they didn’t use words YOU prefer is condescending no matter how “polite” you are in communicating it. People know we live in pluralistic society. They don’t need you to spell that out for them just because you don’t like a particular holiday greeting. </p>
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<p>Oh c’mon now, don’t start putting words in my posts. I said nothing of the sort, Lol.</p>
<p>It might help to think that when people say, “Merry Christmas,” they are expressing a cultural norm, not a religious norm. You are living in a country where celebrating Christmas is the norm of the dominant culture, even among people who are not very religious, or not religious at all. It is, in fact, very much like hearing somebody say, “God bless you” if you sneeze–that is cultural, not religious.</p>
<p>This is ridiculous!
What sort of idiot would be offended by a Christmas tree?
It doesn’t denounce any other religion.
I am Jewish by the way but I enjoy Christmas a lot.</p>
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<p>Not only that, but it is an official Federal holiday. Pretty hard to ignore it.</p>
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<p>Yeah, I hate when people gang up and maliciously taunt me with greetings of “Merry Christmas.” I can see how that might keep you up at night {shudder}.</p>
<p>On the “God Bless You” note, I’ve started started saying “Gesundheit” (which literally means “health” in German) and more than one person has responded hostilely (saying, “thanks, but I’m Jewish/atheist/agnostic”). I thought that “Gesundheit,” having absolutely no religious overtones, would be more polite, but I guess not. Maybe next time someone sneezes I’ll just say, “Cover your mouth next time!”</p>
<p>I wonder if Christians in Israel get all offended by menorahs during Hanukkah.</p>
<p>^Dane Cook does a hilarious skit on the proper response to a sneeze. He goes pretty much through every known response.</p>
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I doubt it, but check this out:</p>
<p>[Christmas</a> tree isn’t Jewish - Israel Opinion, Ynetnews](<a href=“http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3486884,00.html]Christmas”>http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3486884,00.html)</p>
<p>The reality is that those who are part of the “dominant culture” (to use someone else’s words) often have a lot of difficuluty understanding the reactions and feelings of those who are not. There is often an undercurrent, whether intentional or not, whether conscious or subliminal of “well, we are the dominant culture, so just live with it and stop complaining”. When it comes to religion and our public and government institutions and other tax supported entities, that’s just not acceptable and raises various constitutional issues.</p>
<p>When it comes to personal interactions, it is simply insensitive regardless of intent. It is as presumptuous for someone to wish me a “Merry Christmas” as it would be for me to wish someone a “Happy New Year” at Rosh Hashanna or an “easy fast” at Yom Kippur. And it isn’t because I have an ax to grind about Christmas; I routinely spend Christmas Day with my brother-in-law who invites me to dinner with his side of the family just as we invite him and his side of the family to a Chanukah dinner at our house. However, socity in general and those who are not our intimates should act with due regard and respect for the fact that we are a diverse society and when that fails, it is legitimately objectionable.</p>
<p>As to store clerks and others who do not know me who wish me a Merry Christmas, my response is “And you have a Happy Chanukah”. Gets the message across in a non-confrontational manner - and the looks on their faces are often very revealing.</p>
<p>This is a fascinating thread!
We live in a <em>very</em> closed, homogenous, religious place. Our family is not Christian or any other religion. I personally have come to have quite negative feelings about most major organized religions (feelings which have become stronger since living here), because through history they have been the cause of much of the strife and suffering in the world. If people could just do their own thing without trying to control other people, it would be okay. But the power-hungry leaders, and the “our way is the only way”, and “WE are the chosen ones”, blah blah blah end up causing crazy religious nuts (including Bush and Bin Laden – both of them said God told them to do it) to justify bombing and killing.<br>
This state we live in (it will never be “home” for me) has NO separation of church and state in the state constitution. It amazes me that they have progresed so little…
They even have the Ten Commandments posted outside our courthouse. This bothers me.</p>
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<p>I doubt this very much. Unless one is perfect, everyone on the face of this planet has felt like an outsider, or inferior, or the odd-ball, about something. This issue is whether just because one feels this way sometimes about certain things, that those things must therefore be eliminated from our culture, so that some people don’t feel bad.</p>
<p>With public institutions, including quasi-public ones supported by out tax dollars, and our government, either you believe in seapration of church and state or you don’t -and if you don’t, well that’s exactly why the Constitution and Bill of Rights are framed as they are. With regard to private enterprise and the culture of one’s personal life, everyone has the right to make their own choices just as I am free to express my reaction to it where those choices intrude on the zone of my personal life without my consent.</p>
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<p>Wrong application. The subject was about a Christmas tree, which as stated many times in this thread, is not in any way religious. It has nothing to with seperation of church and state.</p>
<p>“The reality is that those who are part of the “dominant culture” (to use someone else’s words) often have a lot of difficulty understanding the reactions and feelings of those who are not.”</p>
<p>That’s true as a general rule, but as an agnostic Jew, I’m hardly a member of the “dominant culture” when it comes to religion.</p>
<p>Why do you think it’s insensitive to say “Happy New Year” to a stranger you meet on Rosh Hashana? Maybe you genuinely want them to be happy during the 365 days that follow Rosh Hashana. Why shouldn’t a Jew wish happiness upon a gentile during a Jewish holiday?</p>
<p>A big smile and a “Happy Hanukkah” is a perfectly polite and appropriate response to “Merry Christmas.” But rejecting the good wishes with a lecture about how you don’t celebrate Christmas is not.</p>
<p>Good point Hanna,</p>
<p>But my guess is that we will suffer another lecture about yet another exclusionary insult, which will be about wishing someone a **“Happy New Year”<a href=“as%20people%20have%20different%20religious%20calenders.”>/B</a></p>
<p>“Why do you think it’s insensitive to say “Happy New Year” to a stranger you meet on Rosh Hashana? Maybe you genuinely want them to be happy during the 365 days that follow Rosh Hashana. Why shouldn’t a Jew wish happiness upon a gentile during a Jewish holiday?”</p>
<p>But Hanna, that WOULD be weird, for us as Jews, to walk around saying Happy New Year to strangers we meet on Rosh Hashanah. Whether it’s well-intended or not. I try not to be presumptuous about what other people celebrate or do.</p>
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<p>That a religious display might violate the Establishment Clause is a legitimate argument against them, imo. But to complain that a near-universal secular cultural tradition must be abolished because some people might have their feelings hurt over it, or feel inferior or left out because of it, seems over-sensitive to the extreme.</p>