I'm white. I have blue eyes. And when I was young, my hair was red. I was working retail, and this old lady said "Merry Christmas."
Me: "Happy Holidays!"
Her: "It's Merry Christmas. I know your boss doesn't like it, but you should say it to me. So Merry Christmas."
Me: "Are you Christian?"
Her: "Yes."
Me: "Well, I'm not. So Happy Holidays."
She got so stunned, like I'd slapped her. I was quite ready to get called in for being some kind of way with a customer but I guess she was too afraid of dealing with a heathen. Still, if you've ever worked retail, you'd know why this felt like a victory.
Yeah, I don’t think “mentally ill people” only exist in specific places or that specific areas are “full” of them. I mean, I know for sure at least one deranged person lives in your area.
Also I highly doubt you truly worked in retail if you never experienced a customer like this. If you did, you must have been lucky and in an extremely high end store.
People are the same everywhere in the world, no better or worse than anywhere else. Which is kinda great IMO.
There’s like 10 Christmas songs. All of them have hundreds of different versions. Doesn’t matter if your not hearing the exact same song. Your hearing the same songs on repeat. My last retail job the muzak box was accessible to everyone in the office so as soon as I would get there I would change the channel.
I worked in a video arcade in the 90s and we had a 1-hour VHS tape on repeat showing on TVs all over the arcade featuring recent music videos, cartoons, etc. That Christmas, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ came out and it was on that tape. I heard that song every day of December, 8 times a day, 40 times a week, 160 times that month in total.
I hate that song so much more than everyone else does.
You’re not being oppressed. It’s just that saying merry Christmas to a crowd of diverse backgrounds is like wishing your mum a happy fathers day. She won’t be mad or offended, she’ll just think she should have breastfed you.
Or telling someone “happy birthday “ when they’re in a group of people who aren’t having birthdays themselves. Only a three year old would get upset that they’re not included.
Most “traditions”, including holiday traditions, food culture, etc, are incredibly recent things. But people cling to it like they are the totality of their identify.
Maybe it’s different in the US and other cultures, but as an atheist I’ve never seen the phrase as a very religious thing. I say “merry Christmas” and “happy holidays” indistinctly and I’ve never seen anyone offended by the use of either, independtly of their faith (or lack thereof).
I say “merry Christmas” on the actual Christmas day though.
No one is offended besides the hardcore Christians. No muslim or orthodox Christian or whatever would be mad if you wish them merry Christmas if that’s the thing where you both live. As always, it’s fake fabricated outrage.
I have a neighbor just like this who INSISTS this is a Christian country and it’s Christmas break not WiNtEr break. Satan’s greetings from ya main witch! ✨🥰
At work in my department they told us we can put decorations in our (at home!) office but to try and stay religiously neutral. Meanwhile in my friend’s department (same employer) they got an email to wish employees a happy Easter back in April, happy Mawlid (celebration of Muhammad’s birth) back in September and happy Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah in October…
I’m an atheist so I don’t celebrate any of these things and to me holidays should just be spread equally to give people long weekends, but I can’t help but laugh at the hypocrisy when it comes to Christmas compared to all other holidays through the year…
That’s honestly refreshing to hear that your friends department encouraged them to celebrate multiple different religious holidays. There shouldn’t be any problem celebrating religious holidays as long as they are all given equal considerations and the company doesnt play favorites.
To me anything religious should be treated as such, something private that has nothing to do with your workplace and only secular holidays should exist considering holidays are imposed by the government and there’s supposed to be a separation of religion and State (in my country anyway), but I know my opinion on this subject is pretty extreme.
The holidays we have are so commercialized they hardly feel religious to me. Christmas and Easter are just times to spend with family, nothing to do with Jesus.
Then people should have no issue with them being moved around so the holidays are equally divided throughout the year, right? There’s no importance to them happening on the specific dates they do at the moment, right?
There’s only five true public holidays applied throughout the whole of Canada
Quebec has their National holiday but no civic holiday. Only four provinces out of ten (two of those only for government employees), the territories and jobs under federal jurisdiction have the truth and remembrance day.
Even counting all of them there’s a big hole after the new year and the next one is… Good Friday which is 100% religious…
But at the federal level that’s 12 holidays that could be separated to get rid of religious holidays and to give everyone one long weekend every month!
What annoys me, and I’m Jewish ethnically but I’m an atheist, is the commercialization of Hanukkah. It wasn’t even a major Jewish holiday. People just decided, “well, it’s near Christmas and they used to give raisins. Good enough.” I mean just make up a new holiday or something.
I think that is is important to note that there is very little real evidence for Christmas being taken from saturnalia. You can google christmas and saturnalia and come up with plenty of web articles, but looking at the actual history of it makes it pretty clear. Christmas takes place around the same time of saturnalia, sure, but that does not make it a Christian stab at replacing it. Saturnalia was traditionally observed between the 17th and 23rd of December, not the 25th. It was a 5-7 day festival, not a one day festival. Additionally, the church is said to have gotten the 25th by taking the day John’s father was told he would have a son (shortly after the day of attonement), the new testiment statement that Elizabeth was 6 months pregnant when Jesus was conceived, and adding 40 weeks to the end for the average pregnancy. This would put Jesus born in late December. This general time line was documented as being calculated as early as CE 200s.
I work with people in three different time zones. There is always someone having a flower festival, religious day or national holiday. Nobody gets offended for forgetting a holiday or if they did they don’t last long.
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