What's wrong with "Merry Christmas"?

Carol justcarol67 at yahoo.com
Tue Jan 1 20:37:28 UTC 2008


Carol earlier:
>
> > >  Christmas trees have become holiday trees; Christmas stamps
have become holiday stamps 
> 
Susan: 
> It seems to me that last time I went to the post office there was a
 generic Christmas stamp (usually Santa Claus, this year a snowman in
the snow? and a bear in the snow?) and a Christian religious stamp,
wasn't it last year the Pieta? (Picture of Mary holding the dead
Jesus? There's also a Chanukah stamp...
> 

Carol again:

USPS has a "holiday store" with "holiday train sets," etc. Their link
for "holiday stamps" does take you to Christmas stamps (religious),
along with Hanukkah and Eid and Kwanzaa stamps, but there is no
secular Christmas stamp with Santa Claus or Christmas trees or
anything else specifically associated with Christmas, as in previous
years, only a generic "holiday knit stamp," which would, I think, have
been called a Christmas stamp ten or fifteen years ago, just as last
year's "holiday cookie stamps" would have been called "Christmas
cookie stamps" at that time.

They would never have a Pieta for Christmas. That relates to Good
Friday, which is not a day for celebration (though it's depicted in
Catholic art). The religious Christmas stamp is always a Madonna and
child (or perhaps a Nativity scene?). Oddly, I've seen forums in which
Fundamentalist Christians complained about the "Catholic" stamp and
wondered where the "Christian" one was, as if Catholics weren't
Christians (existing before the Fundamentalists) and as if the birth
of Jesus weren't what Christmas is all about from the Christian
perspective.

Carol, wondering whether anyone besides people who celebrate Christmas
bought the generic "holiday knit" stamps





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