How the Christmas cookie crumbles
An e-mail fracas at North Seattle Community College hits on why "the most wonderful season of all" causes us so much angst.
Here in Seattle, the phrase "Merry Christmas" has been largely expunged from public discourse. Haltingly and awkwardly, we wish each other happy holiday; we talk vaguely about a holiday season; we plan parties that by all appearances look like Christmas parties, but we never call them such. This despite every indication that Christmas, at least the consumerist trappings of it, is alive and well. Every Starbucks sign hawks a peppermint latte; the sound of Barbra Streisand belting out "Jingle Bells" can be heard all over town; whole city blocks are lit up like, well, like Christmas trees. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Seattleites more than any other citizenry I've witnessed seem to love themselves some Christmas lights. (Although not without challenge.) No doubt darkness by three o'clock in the afternoon has something to do with this, fueling one's desire to push back with gaiety against the dreariness of a Northwest winter.
So it came as no small surprise when the very people who are supposed to be stormtroopers in the so-called war against Christmas — college professors — leapt to the defense of a North Seattle Community College staff member who was chided for referring to "Christmas cookies" in a recent e-mail message. Nobody I talked to had kept the hapless sender's original message because we get on average 20 "all staff" e-mails per day, the bulk of which end up in the trash without so much as a glance through. Apparently she sent out an order form for cookies, and these were supposed to have been holiday cookies, but she called them Christmas cookies. The reference slipped past most people's radars but was noticed by a human resources officer whose job it apparently is to sit in a mistletoe-free cubicle somewhere in the district, monitoring e-mail for vague religious references.
What finally tore our attention away from the crush and grind of late-quarter workload was the original sender's apology message, sent to all staff and carrying the subject line, "Holiday Cookie Order Apology." In the tone of someone clearly being asked to apologize for behavior for which there is no need to apologize, the sender lets us know that, in sending out her cookie order form, she had not been "trying to highlight, segregate, discriminate, or diminish any specific religion." Her closing is that granddaddy of non-apologies, the one that says I'm only sorry for your offense, not my action: "Again please accept my sincere apology should I have offended anyone." Remarkably, the sender goes to great lengths to avoid use of the word that got her into trouble in the first place. "I mistakenly made a reference to a specific religious holiday in the subject line ..." she writes.
The apology was sent at 6:48 p.m. on a Thursday, her punisher seemingly adding insult to injury by requiring her to work after hours. The first response came in at 8:48 a.m. on Friday (college instructors apparently aren't early risers) and begins with simply, "No apologies please." The writer decries the political correctness that has made people constantly fearful of offense, and then adds:
Love and friendship is more about Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanza, about the Peace Pipe and the Peace Symbol, about Yin and Yang, Cosmic Unity, the Rainbow, Ramadan. I'm sure I didn't represent someone here and I admit a lack of knowledge of every culture, but the point is we need to join hands in the celebration of the richness and differences of our cultures, and stop being encouraged by the revengeful few who create this turmoil, and make us resentful and militant during a celebration of peace.
You have to love a town for rhetoric like this. It reminds me of "Uptight Seattleite," only this isn't satire; it's real. Notably, in a message that asks someone else not to apologize for offending, this writer imbeds an apology of her own, lest she offend anyone by not representing them in her ecumenical list. She not only apologizes for possible exclusions but for her "lack of knowledge," as well.
Over the next three days, more than 30 messages on the subject clogged recipients' inboxes. To append the "Christmas to Ramadan" list above, staff chimed in with "Happy Hanukkah," "Feliz Navidad," "Maligayang Pasko," and "Mele Kalikimaka." Several jumped in with simply "Merry Christmas," as if reveling in an opportunity to write that instead of "Happy Holidays." One added "Happy Festus," but I think he was referring to the holiday popularized on Seinfeld, Festivus (as in, for the rest of us), not to the Missouri city of Festus, although I suspect this group would extend their embrace to the citizens of Festus, too.
Comments:
Posted Sat, Dec 15, 3:09 a.m. inappropriate
Awww! Poor Christians! So abused!: As one of the people that retailers, public servants, and employers are trying to include by saying Happy Holidays I have to call foul on all the whining from the majority.
In case you didn't know, virtually every part of the way you celebrate your winter holiday was ripped off from mine in the early years of Christianity in Europe because your middle eastern monotheistic creed was too drab to survive in a climate that has actual winter.
So as you Christians decorate your Christmas trees (find me an evergreen in Jerusalem, please?) and hold feasts (like they did in Bethlehem, not) and kiss each other under the mistletoe (can't even comment on this one) remember that you wouldn't have any of those cultural treasurers were it not for us Pagans that you so resentfully include with Happy Holidays.
Gods bless! Happy Solstice!
Posted Sat, Dec 15, 8:55 a.m. inappropriate
A war on christmas article?: On crosscut? Reallly? Is there no escaping this silly and polarizing media virus?
Posted Sat, Dec 15, 11:21 a.m. inappropriate
A Long Walk on a Short Pier: A bit baffled by this flatfooted article, which mocks political correctness yet wants desperately to be politically correct. ??? And when did the employees of the college give their permission for all these private emails to be posted online? Hmm.
Posted Sat, Dec 15, 12:39 p.m. inappropriate
offensive cookies: I enjoyed this brouhaha, at least I enjoyed reading about it. For me the depressing aspect of the hyper PC attitude of the HR person is how it ties into the current phenomenon of choosing to be offended when someone is trying to be pleasant and friendly. No one who wishes you "Merry Christmas" is trying to offend you. Offering a Christmas cookie is a sign of peace. What is wrong with the HR person that s/he reacts to a pleasantry as though it were an insult? Shouldn't offense be reserved for actions that are intended to offend or are negative and assaultive? We see the same illogic in our homophobic culture whan people are offended that another person has complimented them or found them attractive. C'mon! If someone finds you attractive, that is a compliment! Say thanks, but no thanks.
And yes, this happens to be a culture where the vast majority of people celebrate Christmas at one level or another. Those who choose not to do so. are free to enjoy the colored lights. It is not reasonable to expect Christmas not to be mentioned, as it would not be reasonable to expect there to be no public recognition of Islamic holidays in Saudi Arabia.
We now have people afraid to offend the easily offended by saying pleasant things to them. No, this isn't a big issue, but it is a real issue. And it probably should be started by the HR person getting into another line of work.
Posted Mon, Dec 17, 8:59 a.m. inappropriate
The Christmas Fallacy: I have to agree with the other comments. This article is inappropriate and offensive. It's narrow-minded and self-centered to assume that peppermint lattes, Jingle Bells, and lights indicate that Christmas is alive and well. These are not Christian symbols. These are symbols that all the faiths of Seattle enjoy in throughout the winter months. People have celebrated light in midwinter for millenia. It has nothing to do with Christ. I have lights on my house because they are beautiful, not because I secretly wish I could celebrate your religion!
Posted Mon, Dec 17, 10:16 a.m. inappropriate
Yom Kippur: Lisa Albers wrote, "it's not as if we take collective notice of Yom Kippur, an arguably more important holiday than Hanukkah in the Jewish tradition."
Er, no argument about it. Hanukkah is a decidedly minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, whose importance has been puffed by Christmas-envy. Yom Kippur is the lynchpin of the Jewish year, the highest of the high holidays, and at the very core of what it is to be Jewish.
Posted Mon, Dec 17, 12:35 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Awww! Poor Christians! So abused!: BTW, what holiday is it we are celebrating this time each year? And of course you DO know that the word Holiday derives from "Holy Day", don't you?
Oh my, whatever will you poor secularists do now. I mean all these attacks on your sensibilities by the eeeeevil Christians and their over bearing Holy Day...errr I mean Holiday.
Any way, a MERRY CHRISTMAS (this means CHRIST MASS or a CELEBRATION of the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ. Oh my, I think I'm beginning to see why this day so upsets you God-less types.) to you all.
Posted Mon, Dec 17, 12:41 p.m. inappropriate
RE: The Christmas Fallacy: I have lights on my house because they are beautiful, not because I secretly wish I could celebrate your religion!
Do the lights stay up all year, or are they just put up for CHRISTMAS? Because if they are NOT up all year then you have joined the ranks of the liberal hypocrites out to trash Christianity until it becomes irrelevant.
It won't work, of course because what you secularists will never get is that the more you try to take Christianity and it's celebration away from believers, the tighter they cling to it.
Posted Mon, Dec 17, 3:37 p.m. inappropriate
RE: The Christmas Fallacy: Every non-equatorial culture that I know of has a mid-winter holiday, and it's usually one of the most important in their calendar. Most of what we associate with Christmas came to Christmas from Saturnalia and Yule. SO WHAT?!? Pompous ersatz pagans and conspicuously-pious "reason for the season" Christians can both take a hike as far as I'm concerned. The holiday that we call Christmas (and I have no problem calling it that because that's what most people in today's civilized world call it) has its roots deep in the mists of pre-history. One is truly in touch with the mysteries of mankind's earliest stirrings of culture at this time of year. Christianity has added to the festival just as other cultures have; and don't be surprised if, a couple thousand years from now, if monotheism is just a dim memory, people will still be setting out figurines of a baby, his parents, and three kings without really knowing where the tradition came from -- or maybe not. Who knows. I don't care. Christmas is mankind's holiday. It's had many names over the epochs of man and may have many more but right now it's Christmas and more power to it. I come from a long line of agnostics, but our family always had a manger scene and sang Christmas carols (Christian and non-Christian), and like Stan Borseon I yust go nuts at Christmas, and I wish a hearty "Merry Christmas" to everyone, especially those who are offended by it - but no offense, OK?