Internet Outrage and Winter Holidays

Ah, 'tis the season for outage on the internet. While there is always some sort of outage over something, the winter holiday season seems to bring out the worst out of people.

If you've been online at all this week, you have probably seen the drama over the new Starbucks holiday cups. The silly things are red with the Starbucks logo, but for some so-called Christians it is a reason to get up in arms.

I'm going to say this right now - There is No War on Christmas!!!

As as Christian, I roll my eyes every year at the whole War on Christmas bs that gets floated around the internet and other places. I live in the USA and Christians are not oppressed here. In fact, some so-call Christians are the ones wanting to do the oppressing.

There is nothing offense in saying 'Happy Holidays," to someone. I consider the Holiday Season to start with Halloween and end with New Years. There are so many winter holidays in November and December, that it's actually kind of rude to assume that everyone is celebrating the same way.

I personally know people who celebrate religious Christmas, secular Christmas (called Giftmas by some people, which I think is a great name for it), the Winter Solstice and Hanukkah. If I know what holiday they celebrate, I try to wish them well for what every holiday is theirs. But when you see someone at the store that you may not know, like someone who holds the door open for you or a cashier, Happy Holidays is the clear choice because it includes just about everyone.

Right now, it's too early for Christmas drama anyway. It's not even the middle of November yet! Tomorrow is Veteran's Day, a holiday of vast importance that seems to get lost in the shuffle as Christmas tries to take over everything. Plus Thanksgiving is in there too.

Before you get all outraged over something stupid like plain red Starbucks cups, try and think about others. All people aren't the same, they have different viewpoints. Not everyone is a Christian, but if you are a Christian, you may want to try and be more like Jesus rather than trolling on the internet.

For me, I wish everyone Happy Holidays. Tomorrow I'll be thinking about the brave men and women who have served our country in the military. On Thanksgiving, I'll be giving thanks for everything wonderful in my life. After that, I'll get to Christmas and celebrate in my own way and wish people well in their own celebrations.

Christmas Overreach

I love Christmas. I want to get that out first thing. But I don't love Christmas in the beginning of November or in late October. I'm not even very fond of Christmas in July. But the Christmas overreach has been creeping in and taking over other holidays.

Yesterday I read and shared an article from Jezebel called Christmas Must Be Stopped. Let's Declare War on Christmas. The author talks about the war on Christmas being the overtaking of Thanksgiving and now even Halloween. She also mentions that too much of a good thing can be overwhelming. I totally agree with her.

When I was a kid, the Christmas stuff didn't show up in stores until around Thanksgiving. Black Friday was a thing but didn't happen until early Friday morning. My family had our own traditions. We stayed home on Thanksgiving, preferring to make the 3 hour trek to where most of our family lived for Christmas.

On Thanksgiving, we'd watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. We'd have a small lunch of cheese, crackers and summer sausage. While my mom got our feast ready, my dad would watch the Lions play football while my sister and I would decorate our rooms for Christmas.

Over the rest of the weekend, we'd go cut down our tree and and deck our halls. My mom loved Christmas so nearly every room of our house was decked. Christmas lasted all December and it was wonderful and joyous.

After my mom passed away, Christmas lost some of its' magic. When Emily was born, it regained some and we started up some of my old traditions. We do generally travel on Thanksgiving - either to see our family in GA or Charlotte. But we generally get our tree and our halls decked in late November / early December.

Once the end of December comes around, I'm ready for Christmas to be over with. Commercialization rules the roost instead of the birth of Christ (which is the reason for the season for us since we are Christians).

I refuse to do anything Christmas related until after Thanksgiving. The snow rule is the only exception and I've already used that up this year. So I'm all for a war on Christmas - go Halloween and Thanksgiving!

The "War" on Christmas

This past weekend was Asheville’s Holiday parade. On the local news’ Facebook page, there is always a ton of posts complaining that the parade is a Holiday parade and not a Christmas parade. I’m a Christian and I celebrate Christmas, but I never understood the whole war on Christmas thing.

There are tons of Christians out there celebrating Christmas every year, but there are lots of other people too that celebrate other winter holidays. I’m not a big fan of trying to push my religion down people’s throats. I’ll talk about it if people want – my former best friend was agnostic and she had a lot of questions about my religion and what I believe. I answered them all honestly, and I think it gave her a lot to think about.

But I like the use of ‘holiday’ because it’s inclusive. I may say Merry Christmas, since that’s what I celebrate, but I wouldn’t mind if someone said Happy Hanukkah or Blessed Yule if that’s what they celebrate. This country is supposed to have a freedom of religion, so lots of people celebrate different things (or in some cases, don’t celebrate at all).

I wish all Christians would try to be more Christ-like and inclusive to people who aren’t just like themselves. I have plenty of non-Christian friends who I care for dearly and I hope all my friends have a great holiday season.