Being Canadian doesn't always mean being cooler.
Call this another installment in the "Holiday Stupidity" file; it's actually not another instance of the "War on Christmas!!!" bulldada, though.
Happened to hear, on the Wed., 11 Dec. edition of CBC Radio One's This Is That, an interview with Sharon Coyle of the Canadian Association Alliance, who objects to the phrase "Happy Holidays" not because it's not Christmas-specific, but because she doesn't think that anyone should wish anyone a happy anything. "If you're working, you can't have a happy holiday" and "Don't impose your wishes on anyone" are some of her typical (paraphrased) remarks. (The quote from This Is That's blog entry under the previous link is even more outlandish: "First off, to assume someone is actually happy is obscenely offensive. Secondly, to speculate that a person is on holiday is equivalent to slapping them in the face.")
Her solution? Use either "It's December!" or "It's winter!" instead. (She actually prefers "It's winter!," since she also thinks that it's rude to assume that everyone you encounter uses the same calendar. That she didn't take into account that, for residents of the southern hemisphere, the greeting "It's winter!" is, by her logic, also grossly offensive and inappropriate, wasn't addressed.)
Man. And I thought that "Count" Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics (which Robert A. Heinlein thought so highly of; see the Fair Witnesses in Stranger in a Strange Land) was ridiculous.
You can listen to the segment (5:20) here. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was an SNL or a This Hour Has 22 Minutes skit.
*Reposted in a slightly different form from a comment on marlowe1's entry of 10 December 2013 at 16:22:00.
Happened to hear, on the Wed., 11 Dec. edition of CBC Radio One's This Is That, an interview with Sharon Coyle of the Canadian Association Alliance, who objects to the phrase "Happy Holidays" not because it's not Christmas-specific, but because she doesn't think that anyone should wish anyone a happy anything. "If you're working, you can't have a happy holiday" and "Don't impose your wishes on anyone" are some of her typical (paraphrased) remarks. (The quote from This Is That's blog entry under the previous link is even more outlandish: "First off, to assume someone is actually happy is obscenely offensive. Secondly, to speculate that a person is on holiday is equivalent to slapping them in the face.")
Her solution? Use either "It's December!" or "It's winter!" instead. (She actually prefers "It's winter!," since she also thinks that it's rude to assume that everyone you encounter uses the same calendar. That she didn't take into account that, for residents of the southern hemisphere, the greeting "It's winter!" is, by her logic, also grossly offensive and inappropriate, wasn't addressed.)
Man. And I thought that "Count" Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics (which Robert A. Heinlein thought so highly of; see the Fair Witnesses in Stranger in a Strange Land) was ridiculous.
You can listen to the segment (5:20) here. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was an SNL or a This Hour Has 22 Minutes skit.
*Reposted in a slightly different form from a comment on marlowe1's entry of 10 December 2013 at 16:22:00.