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The Majority of Americans Prefer To Be Greeted With 'Merry Christmas' Over 'Happy Holidays', a Poll Finds
"Merry Christmas" is the preferred greeting of a strong majority of Americans. A survey carried in conjunction by news outlet Axios and SurveyMonkey found that 65 percent of the participants wish to be greeted with "Merry Christmas," while 28% prefer "Happy Holidays."
But the minority is willing to use violence , so we are all stuck with the neutered version.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Conservative snowflakes need to be reminded of Jesus Christ, the Liberal activist? Too bad they don't seem to know anything about his teachings.
"Happy Holidays" was invented because 100% of Americans aren't Christian. But 65%? Congratulations! You just found a percentage of your sample audience that is Christian! Now you just have to ask yourself: Do you support tolerance of others?
Happy holidays is inclusive for everyone, and includes people who don't celebrate Christmas. Merry Christmas is fundamentally exclusionary. I'm Jewish, and I don't care much, but after living in Alabama for a while, I can see why people care. Let me tell a story that's relevant that occurred with a work colleague (who already knew I was Jewish based on earlier conversations) when I was in Alabama (this occurred about December 20th or so last year):
Colleague: So are you going anywhere for Christmas break? Me: Well, for break, I'll be spending time with my family who is going to be in Puerto Rico, and my wife is going back to visit her family back North. Colleague: So you won't be together for Christmas? That's sad! Me: Well, the relevant winter holiday for Jews is Channukah, which isn't a big family holiday for us. The big family holidays are Passover and the Jewish New Year. Colleague: Oh ok, have a Merry Christmas, Me: You too, NAME.
It was like he could not get in his head that someone didn't celebrate Christmas. Given that, it isn't at all surprising that some people find the repeated "Merry Christmas" really uncomfortable.
I have to work tonight, You Insensitive Clod!
and I worked last night (Christmas Eve) as well
The majority of Americans aren't hate-filled malcontents that actively seek opportunities to be offended by nothing little holiday traditions. The majority of Americans know there is nothing in "Merry Christmas" that needs to be fixed and have low regard the shitheels that think there is.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The only reason 'happy holidays' exists is because of people who are triggered by hearing 'merry christmas'. Unless the poll records how many people HATE 'merry christmas', then it won't reveal why 'happy holidays' exists.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Welcome, newcomers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it!
#DeleteFacebook
First, the poll was of "likely" greetings, not "preferred" ones. Huge difference there.
Second, the poll was of what greetings the respondents used, not received. Even bigger difference.
Humbug!
Frankly, I don’t see anything in that conversation showing that your colleague “could not get in his head that someome didn’t celebrate Christmas”. He heard you, and on his way out, merely wished you an enjoyable day on the day that he calls Christmas Day.
Seasonal greetings are not a reference to you, your culture and your lifestyle. They are a reference to those of the person greeting you (and, typically, of the larger community around you).
For example, on Thanksgiving day, people who were not born in America likely won’t care a bit. Does that mean that it’s not Thanksgiving Day for them? Don’t they have the day off like everyone else? Should we care that they aren’t going to celebrate it? We wish them a happy day, and that day is named Thanksgiving Day. So Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Same thing for Christmas and any other holiday that’s massively followed by the larger part of the population. There’s nothing oppressive about it, unless one chooses to feel oppressed by it. Conversely, there is something oppressive about telling people that they may not name traditions that their community has long been widely following.
If a Jewish faithful said something like “Happy Hanukkah” to me, I would absolutely find it oppressive on my part to tell him that I feel harassed by it. Personally, I would find his greeting inclusive on his part. I’d feel that he was mostly expressing friendship, while sharing a bit of his faith and culture, in a welcoming way, without trying to force it on me: a greeting is not the same thing as proselytising!
Sir Isaac Newton was definitely verifiably born on Dec 25, 1642. To be fair, that was under the Julian Calendar, which corresponds to Jan 4 on our calendar, but it's as good a reason for the season as any. (Well, after axial tilt, of course, and orbital eccentricity on certain planets.) Sometimes I get really mixed up and say "Happy Halloween" because, y'know, DEC 25 == OCT 31.
Aside: even ca. 200 AD, people were mostly guessing when Jesus Christ was actually born. The Church picked the date December 25 to align with the Roman celebration of the winter solstice, even though the date was "probably" wrong (and in fact some Eastern churches celebrate Christmas on Dec 25 in non-Gregorian calendars, and they definitely can't all be right), because the point of Christmas is celebrating Jesus's birth (and life, teachings, and death/resurrection^H^H^H^H bad weekend), not getting the exact dates right.
The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008
Obama didn't become President until 2009.
Funny how that article completely glosses over that fact. It's almost like the author might be biased.
Sorry, but no.
Preference does not require intolerance, but bigotry does.
Beware of the Leopard.
it mostly came out of government functions. Schools, court buildings, etc. People were 'triggered' because a lot of non Christians get kinda nervous about the cult-like atmosphere of the evangelicals, the fact that many of our closest allies are still theocracies and the thousands of years of recorded history of religion being used in conjuncture with government to oppress.
Through a lot of hard fought battles America became a secular nation, there are those of us who want to keep it that way. And then there are those among us who do not.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I would love to be greeted by a oral sex from every single 20 year old woman that weighs less than 150 lbs.
Why so picky?
You should check the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution is the framework for operations, the Declaration of Independence is the reason for the nation to exist. And the Declaration does start off with God and the Creator right in the first two paragraphs. Deism was central to the creation of the US - our rights come from our Creator, not from man or anything else. At least according to the founders.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
No sorry, I didn't hear : I was too busy celebrating saturnalia~~
In all seriousness, people have been celebrating the period of the year with the shortest days for as long as they've been able to look up in the sky, and notice what a solstice is (provided they've moved far away enough out of the tropical region to actually have an easily observable solstice).
The fact the one specific small group decided to link this time of the year with some mythology about the birth of some dude who eventually ends up getting nailed on some wooden cross is at best a small foot note on the scale of the whole history of Homo sapiens.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You should check out the Constitution where the only references to religion is:
Article VI, subsection 3
....but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Amendment 1
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....
Both of those are explicit prohibitions on government from promoting any given religion over any other.
Or check out the Treaty of Tripoli....
Article 11
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.....
The Treaty of Tripoli was signed 10 years after the Constitution, and was passed unanimously by congress. Over half of the members of congress at that time had also signed the Constitutional.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I'd prefer to be greeted by being given a hundred dollar bill. I'm not going to expect or demand that it happen.
You know which one I prefer? FUCK YOU, that's the one I prefer.
Merry fucking fuck you and happy fuck off.
Christmas is beyond a travesty now. It's the fucking Gargantua and Pantagruel of holidays—a grotesquerie of selfishness, self-indulgence and fatuous self-congratulatory solemnity that purports to celebrate the most meaningless of moments. Okay, so Christ was a great guy. And he was born, just like every other living creature on the face of this globe, barring the parthenogenesis crowd. Big fucking deal. You want to celebrate something? Celebrate his caring. Celebrate his admonition to seek transcendence by discarding the material things of this world, to leave everything behind and to fucking love one another.
Instead we have this bizarre, distorted twisted mythos of some guy who was too fucking holy to be born because some guy stuck his dick in it. No sir, that could never have happened, because that would be dirty, and the Lord, oh the LORD is so pure. So let's celebrate his pristinity through conspicuous consumption; let's celebrate our unity by driving home to every homeless person, every reject and everyone unloved man, woman and child just how fucking unloved they really are.
Let's celebrate his compassion and caring by making an entire fucking season in which we're forced to confront the despair and the hollowness of our meaningless, pointless existence unless we accept that Mary went spunkless and her boy lives in the sky.
Let's remind every thinking, intelligent person who ever gave it even a moment's passing thought that a massive portion of this species simply cannot allow you to remain aloof of this collective pathology, and if you reject it, or even question it momentarily, you're somehow waging war on society.
So fuck all of you. Fuck you and fuck your elves and fuck your Ho-ho-horrible hyprocrisy and everything it represents.
And next time, mom, don't make me wear this stupid sweater. Just get me an XBox like I asked.
Fuck all of you.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.