MERRY CHRISTMAS, DAMMIT!!! (or not...)
so i did a long, thoughtful post in the usual place about a misdirected e-mail i got. there's this OTHER thesilia (not her actual name) who lives in houston and leads a bible study with her husband who has a name so redneckity that i am hard pressed not to mock it publicly right here. note that i'm not mocking this lady or her bible study, just her husband's name, which happens to be the same as one of my cousin's names. i'm afraid that we're related. anyway, this other me got one of those "rah!rah!we're the majority and we're right and everyone else can suck it!" sorts of e-mails about Christmas and how Christians should shout "MERRY CHRISTMAS" at everyone to show their faith and that they're not afraid of the PC Police.
it irritated the skin right off my eyelids just reading it. it was racist, and fundamentalist, and it deplored the fact that people don't have "Christmas" events in public schools because "it might hurt somebody's feelings".
i really wanted to reply in full liberal fury, spewing flaming latte from my fingertips and firing PC bolts out of my eyeballs. but i didn't. i went the route of "you don't have to be wrong for me to be right" and suggested politeness as an alternative to militancy.
but here's what i'm curious about, and this intersects with a book i read recently, Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas. she talks in the book about how lonely it was to be muslim in southern california at christmas time in the years before much of her family immigrated to the US. i have no firsthand experience with such a feeling. p is jewish and so she's got some more experience of it, but as ms. dumas points out, her jewish friends always had hanukkah to celebrate around that time of year so they didn't feel quite so left out. they had temples to attend, while her family had no mosque, at least in the early years.
do you have any experience being the religious minority? as a child? as an adult? do you have any stories you'd share with me about it? if you feel alienated, does it mitigate the feeling of alienation when public entities use "happy holidays" in place of "merry christmas"? what if it's not a public entity, but your employer? your direct supervisor? your friends at the bar/water cooler/coffee shop?
it irritated the skin right off my eyelids just reading it. it was racist, and fundamentalist, and it deplored the fact that people don't have "Christmas" events in public schools because "it might hurt somebody's feelings".
i really wanted to reply in full liberal fury, spewing flaming latte from my fingertips and firing PC bolts out of my eyeballs. but i didn't. i went the route of "you don't have to be wrong for me to be right" and suggested politeness as an alternative to militancy.
but here's what i'm curious about, and this intersects with a book i read recently, Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas. she talks in the book about how lonely it was to be muslim in southern california at christmas time in the years before much of her family immigrated to the US. i have no firsthand experience with such a feeling. p is jewish and so she's got some more experience of it, but as ms. dumas points out, her jewish friends always had hanukkah to celebrate around that time of year so they didn't feel quite so left out. they had temples to attend, while her family had no mosque, at least in the early years.
do you have any experience being the religious minority? as a child? as an adult? do you have any stories you'd share with me about it? if you feel alienated, does it mitigate the feeling of alienation when public entities use "happy holidays" in place of "merry christmas"? what if it's not a public entity, but your employer? your direct supervisor? your friends at the bar/water cooler/coffee shop?