(no subject)
Okay, it's december 1st, christmas trees and santa's grottos (tacky garden shed affairs with plastic elves, cotton wool and polystyrene snow etc outside) are appearing everywhere, hideously ignorant of the fact christmas is still the best part of a month away. Appearing everywhere that is, except our local shopping centre (mall for the us folks on my flist). Their excuse....it would be offensive to the non christian communities in the city who do not celebrate christmas. What the @?*& ! Let us ignore for the moment that christmas trees etc are not actually part of the christian religious traditions of christmas itself and are actually a teutonic pagan addition to the holiday imported to england circa 1800 AD and these days little more than a crass commercialisation of the holiday designed to make us spend money on glittery tat (I'm a cynic, sue me!). Does this mean that we must also ignore all hindu, muslim, jewish religious festivals, ban chinese new year and fireworks or dawahli etc ? At what point do we become so concerned about "offending" minority groups that we ignore "majority" traditions and common sense and vice versa. I believe passionately in respect for ALL cultures and our respective traditions and values. Tolerance people. I also get extremely pissed off when a store / person / organisation trots out the "pc" message or excuse when the actual reason for not doing something is that they are too tight to actually spend the money on it.