{"id":937,"date":"2016-12-21T19:58:41","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T01:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beckypalmer.thecomputerguy.bz\/?p=937"},"modified":"2016-12-21T20:00:17","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T02:00:17","slug":"war-is-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/?p=937","title":{"rendered":"War is Over"},"content":{"rendered":"

3 years ago I wrote that the “War on Christmas” was a load of crap. \u00a0Guess what? \u00a0I was right then and I’m right now. \u00a0And here’s why:<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Christmas is everywhere. \u00a0There used to be 3 TV specials for Christmas- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and Charlie Brown Christmas. \u00a0I lost count how many there were right year, but I’m betting it’s more than the 40 I counted in 2013. \u00a0There were several big Christmas albums released this year including offerings from Pentatonix and Garth Brooks and Trishia Yearwood, and they all contained mentions of baby Jesus. Every mall has a Santa, usually complete with a workshop full of elves and presents. \u00a0Signs counting down the number of days until Christmas can be found everywhere from banks to fast food joints. \u00a0There is plenty of Christmas all around and it’s only getting bigger every year. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
“But that’s not the kind of Christmas I’m talking about” I hear you saying. \u00a0“I’m talking about when I was a kid and Christmas was all about the birth of the Christ Child. \u00a0Everyone said Merry Christmas- none of this PC Happy Holidays crap”. \u00a0There are two fatal flaws with that line of reasoning:<\/span>
\n
\n<\/span>#1 \u00a0 “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” are both long standing greetings that have been around and used by everyone for many decades without anyone taking offence. \u00a0Take a look at any collection of vintage\/ antique Christmas cards. \u00a0Plenty of them say something other than “Merry Christmas” on them and had pictures of something other than a baby in a manger on them and yet were still sent by and enjoyed by Christians every year without incident.<\/span>
\n
\n<\/span>Or, perhaps you’d rather consider the many beloved Christmas carols- all of them 70 plus years old if they’re a day- that make zero mention of the words Christmas, Jesus Christ, or even Santa Claus. \u00a0Ones I’ve heard in the past week include “Deck the Halls”, “Sleigh Ride”, “Winter Wonderland”,” Jingle Bells”, “There’s No Place like Home for the Holidays”, and “(May the Calendar Keep Bringing) Happy Holidays To You”. \u00a0I’m sure you can think of many more off the top of your head. \u00a0<\/span>
\n
\n<\/span>#2 \u00a0Not everyone is a Christian and therefore not everyone celebrates Christmas. \u00a0We are compelled by law as well as common decency to allow folks of all faiths to worship as they choose. \u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/span>You can choose to support mission\/ outreach campaigns with your time and dollars. \u00a0You can choose to invite friends and neighbors to worship with you or join you in another church activity. \u00a0You can choose to consider how your actions demonstrate your faith and behave accordingly.<\/span>
\n
\n<\/span>Or, you can choose to be offended by someone taking the time to wish you a Happy Holiday. You can choose to make a big stink over your child getting time off for “Winter Vacation”. \u00a0You can choose to make sure your loved ones have all the expensive gadgets and toys they asked Santa for even if you have to shove other shoppers out of the way to do it and then wonder what’s happened to Christmas.<\/span>
\n
\n<\/span>Christmas is STILL just fine. \u00a0The war’s over and we won.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 years ago I wrote that the “War on Christmas” was a load of crap. \u00a0Guess what? \u00a0I was right then and I’m right now. \u00a0And here’s why: Christmas is everywhere. \u00a0There used to be 3 TV specials for Christmas- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and Charlie Brown Christmas. \u00a0I lost count how many there were right… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[20,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/StockSnap_R6UPWEA0JR.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}