Merry Christmas everyone!! Yes,I said Christmas.
I grew up in a household where my mother always had her Menorah and my Father brought home the Christmas tree. For a nice Jewish woman, I must say, my mother got more joy out of decorating the Chritmas trees year after year than my father did. The tinsel had to be put on ONE BY ONE (mannnnnnnn) and the ornaments had to be "just" right".
After they divorced, my mother STILL made sure there was a tree for us to decorate every year.
My grandmother on my mothers side ALSO always made sure to have a christmas tree in her house for when we came to visit.... she loved my father and wanted to make sure that the holiday HE celebrated was always present in her house.
He would come in wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and she would smile happily and thank him and wish him a Happy Chanukkah, in which he also would smile and say thank you. They meant it too, they BOTH appreciated the well wishes and good will that the other was offering.
The moral here folks is that when someone takes the time and the effort to wish you well and a happy (insert holiday here), we should take it in the spirit it was offered and stop trying to make a big deal out of the fact that it may not be the holiday YOU celebrate.
An offer of good will should never be thrown back into peoples faces simply because it isn't "worded" right. Is there SO much good will in todays world that any of us can afford to throw it back when it is offered to us? Isn't there enough going on that separates us ideologically? Do we really need to create other things to take issue with?
It is the holiday season and if I KNOW a persons religion or what holiday they celebrate, I always wish them a happy (THEIR HOLIDAY), but if I do not know what they celebrate, I will wish them a Merry Christmas and if anyone cannot accept a genuine offer of good will in the spirit it was offered in....then it is THEIR problem, not mine.
So.....MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone and whatever holiday you celebrate, may it be a wonderful one for you.
A very special Merry Christmas to our brave men and women in the military, especially those that are in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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