happy holidays

You know, I am a fairly open minded person. And as much as my husband hates the holiday season - I still find a child-like delight.

Taking my son to meet Santa, Christmas tree decorating, baking, family time - I really look forward to it.

What I don't look forward to - the constant barrage of people on my Facebook wall - acquaintances, former co-workers/university friends posting about the difficulty they face when being forced to say Happy Holidays in lieu of Merry Christmas. A true friend of mine (labelled here as N) and I had a discussion last night based on this, N loves the season, she decorated her house immediately after Halloween, the whole shebang - and then someone posted this on their wall:

"WHAT A CROCK ..... We can't say Merry Christmas now we have to say Happy Holidays. We can't call it a Christmas tree, it's now called a Holiday tree? Because it might offend someone. If you don't like our "…Customs" and it offends you so much then LEAVE.. I will help you pack. They are called customs and we have our traditions If you agree with this...please post this as your status!! IT'S MY FREEDOM TO SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS! and that JESUS IS THE REASON! I say lets put Christ back in Christmas!!

I was stunned, as I always am. To be fair, I shouldn't be surprised - Regina is still a fairly God-fearing city, but we've also started having a lot of immigrants moving to the city, boosting our economy, going to school - but at the lack of surprise comes because we have people here who are still object to changing over their clocks.

So, to summarize - raise your hand if you find it challenging to physically say the words "Happy Holidays" instead of Merry Christmas.