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Opinion

Letters to the Editor

We should be free to say 'happy holidays'

To the editor:

In a letter to the editor in Tuesday's paper ("Political correctness toward Christmas trivial"), Jillian Baginskie complains that political correctness is taking away from the spirit of Christmas and asserts that "few get upset because an employee says "merry Christmas" to them." 

The writer is right. I do not celebrate Christmas, but it doesn't bother me when someone wishes me a merry Christmas. I understand that others do not realize that it is not a holiday I celebrate. However, by the same token, why should it bother a person if someone says "happy holidays" rather than "merry Christmas"? What is the harm? "Happy holidays" is a more inclusive phrase and takes into account the fact that close to 25 percent of all Americans do not identify themselves as Christians. 

What really bothered me in this letter was when the writer had the audacity to ask, "Why is it that when the majority of this country is Christian and celebrates Christmas must the powers that be ostracize us?" 

If you want to talk ostracism, imagine what it is like to grow up surrounded by the hysteria that is Christmas when you do not celebrate it. For more than a month out of every year, television commercials are nothing but Christmas, grocery store speakers blare "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and workers and students are given ample time off from their work to celebrate. I would hardly qualify this as ostracism. Christmas is celebrated ad nauseam. I fail to see how so-called political correctness results in some sort of perceived ostracism of Christians.

Emily Gelman
UH Law Center, class of 2007