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Take a more universal approach to season's greetings

Three (holiday) cheers to Philip Gailey for his Merry Holiday and Happy Christmas (Dec. 4).

While he is absolutely correct that a Christmas tree is a Christmas tree, there is far more to the issue.

Although we live in a country with a majority of Christians, not all of us are Christian. Therefore, we need to ensure that we respect everyone's religious belief and not impose our own on them. Because I don't know what someone's religious belief is, I find myself wishing people a happy holiday. Of course if I know someone is Christian, I will say Merry Christmas. And I appreciate those who give me the same respect.

I also look for commercial enterprises to do the same. If all they market are Christmas decorations and greetings of Merry Christmas, they are telling me that they are speaking to only one segment of our community - and that segment excludes me as well as other non-Christians.

In the spirit of love for our fellow man that all of our religions teach us, I invite everyone to take a more universal approach to their season's greetings. And to those who have their lawyers at the ready to fight for Christmas, how about aiming them at the needs of the oppressed and impoverished in a gesture of goodwill toward all?

Holiday evolution

Jerry Falwell's campaign of "Friend or Foe" is the opposite of the views of the pious ancestors of my upbringing. My grandmother, born in Western Pennsylvania in 1863, grew up in a household that took their Calvinist/Reformed faith seriously, with daily devotions for the entire household before breakfast, memorization of Beatitudes, Psalms, etc. She told me that when she was a child, "Christmas" was never observed, was even offensive to Bible-believing people. It was foreign, "Pagan."

But, when she was about 8, her equally pious New England grandmother came to live with them, and on the morning of Dec. 25 that year, each child found an orange in her shoe!

A special meaning

Re: Merry Holidays and Happy Christmas.

Hooray, Philip Gailey! This is a free country.

It will always be a Christmas tree, and the 25th of December will probably always be a day to celebrate Jesus' birthday. (Even though it is historically presumed to be in April.)

But the eight days of Hanukkah start Dec. 25 this year, so "Happy Holidays" has a special meaning for some of us, and sharing is always fun.

Maybe there can be "peace on earth, goodwill to man" - some day.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Gailey, and Happy Holidays.

Know your holiday history

The uproar over saying "Happy Holidays" instead of Merry Christmas is in full swing only because of lack of historical knowledge by our leaders, our general public, and I am sorry to say, the church leaders who should know their Puritan forefathers and their approach to Dec. 25. They felt that the day was a celebration of a pagan ritual and therefore wanted no part of it.

It was a joy to read the article by Adam Cohen (Christmas defenders rewrite holiday history, Dec. 7). As a child, I was a member of a Congregational Church in Massachusetts and know that the church did not celebrate that day and why. I did not know that Massachusetts during the years 1659-1681 made it a crime to celebrate on Dec. 25.

This is just one example of what the lack of historical knowledge can do. It can be humorous, as this is, or it can be extremely dangerous as we are now seeing.

Merry Solstice

Re: Merry Holidays and Happy Christmas.

Christmas tree . . . Holiday tree. Both are perfectly logical names for the silly thing. But to be historically accurate it's actually a Solstice tree, predating Christianity by possibly thousands of years, when similarly ignorant folk living in the higher latitudes celebrated the sun's decision to save their lives by ceasing his alarming disappearing behavior to return again to warm the earth - a kind of rebirth.

The early church wisely co-opted this greatest of all celebrations for its god's birthday celebration despite the fact that Jesus' actual birthday was on another date - some suggest in March.

Tax cuts go to those who pay taxes

Re: The Republicans' millionaire relief act, by Robyn Blumner, Dec. 4.

Blumner refers to budget cuts for the poor and tax cuts for the rich. We have food stamps, SSI, earned income credits, etc. People who don't pay taxes are getting tax refunds.

The bottom 50 percent in income paid only 3.5 percent of income taxes. When you cut taxes it is difficult to cut taxes for those who don't pay taxes. So of course any tax cuts will go to the upper 50 percent in income. They are the ones who pay taxes.

Blumner writes of relieving corporate America of its tax responsibilities. Perhaps she is unaware that anything that causes the cost of products to increase also causes the price of products to increase. If she is serious about helping the poor, she would be lobbying to have all taxes on business eliminated so that prices could come down.

As far as the deficit goes, I too would rather see deficit reduction than tax breaks. But keeping taxes high is no guarantee that Congress will do that.

Someone once said, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." I'm in favor of teaching, not giving.

A one-sided "balance'

After reading two more letters last Sunday from people espousing the "right" side and criticizing everything that is not apparently or obviously right-leaning as being left wing or worse, liberal, I have a few thoughts. I find it interesting that both writers feel that their thinking is fair and balanced and anyone who doesn't say what they want to hear is biased.

It seems to me that any outlet that lays out the news without any editorializing and allows the reader to decide for himself whether the news is positive, negative, or some other "tive," is essentially providing a fair and balanced report. I would put the Washington Post, the New York Times and the St. Petersburg Times in this category. If the reader needs to have everything he reads spun in his political direction, then I would suggest he is being neither fair nor balanced.

[Last modified December 10, 2005, 00:48:02]