When you’re celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Eid al-Adha or Kwanzaa, don’t bother saying “happy holidays” in replace of your own traditional holiday greeting. Don’t mash all the observances into one generic holiday at schools. As this Toronto Sun columnist says, each one should be honoured and celebrated for what it is and we should all be respectful enough to allow it:
To all those who have celebrated these holidays or who will soon be celebrating them, I hope you had or will soon be having a wonderful holiday.
But tomorrow is Christmas Day, which marks not the end of the Christmas shopping season, but the birth of Jesus Christ.
So, I Lorrie Goldstein, the Jewish guy, am giving all you Christians permission to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, this year and every year.
Not just to Christians, but to everyone, as long as you don’t mind the occasional Happy Hanukkah, Eid al-Adha, Diwali or Kwanzaa in reply.
The reason is that the messages of Christmas — faith, salvation, hope, peace, goodwill — are shared by all the world’s great faiths.
Sadly, almost every Christmas these days, some idiot politician, bureaucrat or judge takes down a publicly displayed Christmas tree or does something equally stupid on the grounds it might offend some religious minority somewhere.
In fact, most people, of all faiths, understand that welcoming other religions into the Canadian mainstream was never about excluding Christianity. It’s about the opposite — including everyone. Christians, too.
So, “Merry Christmas” one and all. And to anyone who has a problem with that, you really should get that pickle jammed up your butt surgically removed.
Filed under: Issues, Links | Tagged: Christmas, holiday, religiou
