Merry Fucking Christmas!

Calendar December 7, 2009 | Posted by Xanthippas

I can only shake my head at this sort of nonsense (via DougJ.) Well, shake my head and blog about it! Apparently, Focus on the Family has a website that rates how “Christmas-Friendly” retailers are, wherein right-wing Christians are apparently invited to offer feedback on their holiday shopping experiences, approval being given only when staff at these retailers affirmatively wish a “Merry Christmas” to the shopper…and nothing else! Examples of reviews:

At check-out the clerk wished me Happy Holiday and I said Merry Christmas. And she repeated Happy Holidays again and I said can you not say Merry Christmas? And she said they want to be respectful of everyone and she went through some of the different “holidays” this time of the year. And I said but it Christmas! She looked afraid to say Merry Christmas, very sad.

[...]

I was so thrilled to hear true Christmas Carols being played in the store. I mentioned it to several other shoppers and they were equally pleased. I happily did a large amount of shopping at this store because I was so thrilled with the Christmas atmosphere. Thank you for not giving into ridiculous political correctness and having a backbone.

[...]

Staff was friendly and helpful, but no mention of Christmas. When I said Merry Christmas, they said same to you.

So not only is saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” offensive, but failing to say anything is considered “Christmas-Negligent” and even playing the wrong kinds of Christmas carols is “political correctness!” Now like me, you may be puzzled to find that these Christians believe that not only does Christ belong in Christmas, but he apparently also belongs in most major retailers as well.

Nothing encapsulates the problem with right-wing Christianity more than this ridiculous effort to force people working retailers to say “Merry Christmas” instead of whatever they want, or nothing at all. I happen to think that many of the ancestors of these Christian thought police would be appalled by what the celebration of the holiday has become. It is essentially a month-long orgy of stress, consumerism and cheap sentimentality. Naturally these right-wing Christians would blame that one the over-secularization of the holiday…while posting to websites complaints about all the retailers they are spending they’re money in. Is the irony not obvious enough?

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2 Comments

  1. Nate says:
    12/07/2009 at 3:13 PM

    It all makes sense if you consider the particular claims and creeds of Christianity to be as unimportant as they actually are. The reality is that Christianity is predominantly a collection of labels that are considered part of what is essential to being part of the modern American tribe. Humans, being pack animals, constantly use and seek out labels as a way of affirming core tribal identity. They view willful failure to display labels as a challenge to the pack. People who refuse to say “Merry Christmas” are declaring their opposition to the pack, and clearly want to have another pack take charge.

    A small number of Christians, of course, are constantly being converted to actual Christianity, and when they do they fall out of the main pack activity immediately. They’re never able to be a defining influence because Christianity itself demands wholesale renunciation of such behavior. The remainder, pack animals engaging in primitive pack animal behavior, continue to act under whatever arbitrary labels happen to be at hand.

    • Xanthippas says:
      12/07/2009 at 7:32 PM

      I think that’s a fairly accurate analysis. I don’t really understand that pack mentality, or why anyone would care to judge someone’s public acknowledgment of a holiday as either sufficient or insufficient.

      I should say that there are many, many Christians who have no desire to demand appropriate public acknowledgments of the holiday of others, and that this isn’t aimed at them. I use the term “right-wing” Christian because these types of Christians seem to belong to the same vein of conservatives in general who are appalled at insufficient displays one one’s patriotism, a phenomenon which your explanation seems to cover just as well.