Happy Merry Chrismakwanzakah!

I got an email from my great aunt earlier this week that read thus:

MERRY CHRISTMAS ….

On the way home last night, I was listening to the radio when a newscaster
called his little 91 year old granny to talk to her about the ‘Holidays’. He
mentioned that he had noticed that Christmas has become so ‘politically
correct’ that no mention of Christmas is made by most retailers, we now wish
people ‘Happy Holidays.’

His granny said she missed the Old Fashioned Christmas when everyone
wished each other ‘Merry Christmas’.

I thought about it and agree…so this year I will be making a conscious
effort to wish everyone Merry Christmas…my way of saying that I am
celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

Maybe we can prevent one more treasured tradition from being lost in the sea of ‘Political Correctness.’

God Bless and MERRY CHRISTMAS!! ————–

I don’t have a problem with people wishing me a Merry Christmas. However, I also don’t have a problem with people wishing me a Happy Kwanzaa or a Happy Hanukkah, even though I don’t actually celebrate those holidays. In addition, I don’t have a problem with the good old all-inclusive “Happy Holidays” greeting. It’s certainly better than “Go to hell” or “What the fuck are you looking at?”

I also love Christmas music. I love Silent Night, and O Holy Night, and Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

And I love Here Comes Santa Claus, and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.

I love Ave Maria, though I’m not Catholic.

And, of course, I love I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. That’s one of my favorites!

————–

Night before last, I visited with a group of Taiwanese people who are members of the Tzu Chi Foundation, an international Buddhist organization that provides assistance to disaster victims, among other things. The group had gotten my name from the Red Cross after the fire and have been trying to meet with me since early October. I was finally able to get together with them on Saturday evening, and they wanted to know how I was doing, how they could help, and to give me a blanket and a debit card to help with recovery expenses. The blanket, by the way, is fleece made from recycled plastic bottles.

One of the Tzu Chi volunteers I spoke with wanted to know what my plans were for the Christmas and New Year’s Holidays, to make sure I had support through the holidays, and to let me know that he’d be happy for me to join them for their Chinese New Year Celebration in February. His four-year-old daughter, who attends Chinese school on Saturdays but will begin traditional US kindergarten next fall, was quick to greet me and is often involved in the Foundation’s projects. While I was there, she was helping with sorting through donated clothing.

I met with them at their local leader’s house, where I had to remove my shoes upon entering and where there were Buddha statues all over. They were very welcoming, with one member giving me a hug when she first met me, and with all of them showing a lot of concern about my welfare. I called my grandmother on the way home and told her about the meeting with them, and her response was, “Just don’t get too involved with them. This isn’t China.” I said, “What’s wrong with being involved with a Buddhist organization?”

Okay…I know better. I know that trying to have such a conversation with my grandmother is an exercise in futility, as she has a hard time viewing things from another’s perspective. Buddhists worship false idols with all those Buddha statues, I suppose, and don’t believe in God since they believe in reincarnation, I suppose, at least from her perspective. That makes them a dangerous religion to be involved in. I pointed out to her that you don’t often hear about Buddhists starting wars over their religion, unlike so many others. Not that there have never been wars involving Buddhists, but, for the most part, Buddhists practice pacifism. I just don’t see them as being dangerous, especially not as compared to the Christian extremists found here in the US who think it is okay to kill in the name of Christ.

—————

Today is my department’s holiday lunch, a nice tradition where faculty, staff and students get together to share food and socialize. One of my favorite things about our holiday lunch is that it’s a chance to learn a little more about other cultures through the different dishes people bring to share. My department is pretty diverse, with many students and faculty from other countries, particularly those in Asia. In my opinion, the diversity is one of our biggest selling points.

But every year I hear certain folks in my department refuse to refer to the lunch as a holiday lunch, instead calling it a Christmas lunch, because, according to them, there are no other holidays that should be recognized this time of year. And every year I feel sorry that they can’t see far enough past the ends of their noses to understand that it is the differences that make humankind wonderful. I guess it’s also the differences that make many of us ridiculously close-minded.

—————–

On another note, however, I do agree that political correctness, as well as the anti-fat rhetoric, has gone too far when people are concerned about Santa’s being too fat or saying “Ho Ho Ho.” I mean, seriously. Santa’s always been fat and has always, at least as far as I know, said “Ho Ho Ho.” WTF people? Are there not more important things to worry about in the world?

A word about good manners

I spent the weekend (well, part of Saturday and most of Sunday) in Wilmington with my grandmother. On Saturday evening, we decided to go shopping for a bit, and we went to Kohl’s. Now, my grandmother is 79 years old, and while she lives alone and walks and drives, she has a hard time walking for long distances, especially without anything to hold on to (like a shopping cart or a walker), and she has a handicap placard for her car to keep her from having to walk farther than necessary. She is stubborn as a mule and does not like for others to go far out of their way to make things easier for her, especially if she has to ask them to do such a thing…

Anyway, we were in Kohl’s to look for an outfit for the little girl she’s buying Christmas presents for through her church’s Angel Tree. But, of course, we stopped in the women’s clothing section, which is right beside the girls’ department, and browsed through the clearance clothing. My grandmother found several things she wanted to try on, and I found one, and we headed for the dressing room in the girls’ section, which was the nearest one. I went into the second room, and my grandmother said she was heading for the larger handicap room, where she would have more space to move around and something to hold on to if she needed.

As I’m trying on a top, I hear someone say, quite loudly and in a very hateful tone, “There’s someone in here!!!” to my grandmother as she attempted to push the dressing room door open. The woman followed up by saying, again hatefully, “I guess you can’t see!!!”

The door of the handicap dressing room and the one beside it were both closed, but only the handicap room door was locked – not something you would have known just from seeing the door. One would have had to look under the door or knock in order to know if someone was in there. Obviously my grandmother wasn’t going to look under the door as it would have been difficult for her. Of course, she probably should have knocked, but the room was quiet and she assumed the room was unoccupied.

Not to mention that her pushing on the door didn’t hurt the woman in any way, as the door was locked.

I was infuriated that anyone would be so rude to my grandmother. I finished trying on my blouse, got dressed, and waited outside the smaller (non-handicap) dressing room my grandmother was now using. The woman finished trying on her clothing and, in a huff, stormed out of the dressing room past me.

She was probably in her 40s, with bleach-blond hair and wearing a pink running outfit, and she clearly was not disabled in any shape, form or fashion.

My instinct was to go after her and let her know exactly what I hoped would happen to her…but I didn’t say anything. I was furious, but I knew that my going after her might have caused a scene and gotten me in trouble. Still, I wish I had said something to her.

I told my grandmother later that I wonder how she would have reacted if she’d been so rude to someone she assumed was a stranger but who turned out to be, oh, I don’t know, her pastor or her boss, or a good friend. (If she has any friends, that is!) I’m sure she would have been oh-so apologetic. Or what if she’d said that to someone who actually couldn’t see or who was in a wheelchair and needed the handicap room more than my grandmother did? Able-bodied people and sighted people aren’t the only ones who need to try on clothing…

It’s hard for me to be generous and give someone like that the benefit of the doubt. I can put up with rudeness toward me, but when someone is hateful to my grandmother? Well, that just pisses me off to no end.