Saying ‘Merry Christmas’ shouldn’t be offensive

Once the last final is completed most of us will be heading home for the holidays. According to Western Michigan University, we’re leaving for a winter break, but everyone knows that’s their attempt to streamline themselves with the current trend of political correctness.

We’re going home for Christmas break.

Many of us can probably remember when we were younger, in elementary and middle school, our schools used to actually call this break, Christmas break. This, of course, was before a small, but vocal, group of people began to get their way.

Christmas is of course a Christian holiday. In the U.S., according to an ABC News poll, 83 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christian. Of those remaining 13 percent claimed to have no religion while 4 percent were non-Christians.

According to articles posted by Fox News, the Washington Post, and the BBC, (three totally different sources-no bias) over 96 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas every year. To put that into perspective, that’s roughly 288 million people of our overall population of 300 million.

That’s well over double the number of people who just participated in this most recent Presidential election, so should we also pretend that our electoral process doesn’t exist to not insult those who don’t participate?

Over the course of the last decade or so radio stations, businesses, and individual people have collectively grown more and more fearful of insulting someone by wishing them a Merry Christmas. Those greetings have been replaced by happy holidays.

Many institutions have claimed that their ‘happy holidays’ greeting simply refers to Christmas and the New Year, but that is a load of hogwash, we all know that they simply gave into the pressure of not saying the word Christmas.

Perhaps the most interesting question in this matter is who exactly is it that is pushing for the elimination of the public usage of the word Christmas? Furthermore, who in their right mind would be insulted by someone wishing them a Merry Christmas? Non-Christians don’t hate Jesus Christ, so how can his holiday be an insult?

This next paragraph was supposed to present the case of someone who is insulted by the word Christmas or an organization who pushes for its non use. However, as I asked around campus and searched up and down the internet, all that I could find were opinions and other articles about how completely doltish it is to not be able to say Christmas.

We’ve established that only 4 percent of the population doesn’t celebrate Christmas. Of that 4 percent it’s probably a fairly safe bet that most of them are not insulted by the fact that the rest of us do celebrate the holiday. Thus, around 1 percent of our population is complaining about the commercial usage of the word Christmas.

This 1 percent of the population must be a very powerful bunch of people, certainly much more so than the small percentage of CEO’s and multi-millionaires in our country, to be able to instill so much fear in the media, retail businesses, and other public institutions.

So much fear has been spread in fact that many decorations are no longer displayed, song lists combed thin to file out the insulting songs, and in some places, Christmas trees have became holiday trees.

If someone were to walk up and wish you a happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Bodhi Day, or Eid al-Adha would you really be insulted? If you’re anything like me you’d go home and Google the holiday to see what it actually is.
No logical person is insulted by being wished a Merry Christmas. The only thing that is accomplished by not saying it is putting a damper on the time of year. Most of us have some of our fondest memories from Christmas’s past and it’s a shame that the holiday is being silenced from this time of year.

So as most of us leave WMU for our homes, have a happy holiday season whatever holiday you celebrate. And, since this is America, Merry CHRISTMAS.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=2818

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Dec 7 2008. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
Web Manager: I'm a Communication Student at WMU, a SCUBA Diver, Boater, Ordained Minister, Notary Public, Web Designer, Film Maker, DJ, and of course a Journalist. Born and raised in Port Huron, MI and a graduate of SC4. http://www.codykimball.com