[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: What's wrong with "Merry Christmas"?

[Sherry Gomes]

bboyminn:

It seems to me that in a world that is not run amok with political
correctness, I, who does celebrate Christmas, would uniformly say to others
'Merry Christmas', and they would respond in accordance with their own
holiday tradition.



Sherry:

I work in the admissions department at a well known guide dog school in the
US.  For years, and even more years, during the fall, the staff would all
get together and record a Christmas tape, each staff person recording a
personal greeting, and the tapes--actual records once upon a time--go out to
every graduate of the organization.  I'm a 32 year graduate of the program
myself, and every December, I would haunt my mail box waiting the arrival of
that tape.  Around ten years ago, they started calling it the "Holiday tape"
and then in the last couple years, it's become the "end of the year tape".
This was my second year on staff, and each year I have defied political
correctness and wished the graduates, happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and
happy New Year.  LOL.  The person who handles preparing the tapes now says
she wants the tape to reflect the staff's personal beliefs and thoughts, so
anyone can say, Merry Christmas, happy Hanukah or any other thing they want.
Or nothing, but hi grads this is so-and-so.  The interesting thing is that
the grads, even those who are not Christian, even nominally enough to
celebrate Christmas, mostly resent the descent in to PC-ism and still call
it "the Christmas tape".  Some of them felt so strongly about it that they
wrote to some of the people in upper management to complain about it, and a
couple of those people were atheists, Jewish or Buddha.  I've finally
trained myself to call it the Holiday tape, officially, but I will never
call it the "end of the year" tape!  LOL.

Sherry