Happy *****

I'm going to open this one with a warning - If you are of a strongly religious stance, there's a good chance something (or everything) about this post will offend you. While you're more than welcome to disagree, and I welcome civil discourse in the comments, any baseless accusations or harassing comments will be deleted.

The present prominence of faith in our politics and our day to day lives is starting to get a bit excessive. For the sake of debate, I am going to leave my own beliefs out of this. From Rick Perry's bigoted poorly planned campaign ad opening with the implication that Christianity is an oppressed religion (hint: it's not) to the yearly bickering over saying Merry Christmas in public, I feel like I can't get a word in edgewise to ask why we're getting bent out of shape about this at all.

I think what's really been irking me is the preponderance of posts on various social media sites using phrases such as "So glad to see that (place) is not afraid to say Merry Christmas!". It's the use of afraid, once again acting as if Christianity is some repressed and secretive lifestyle in the U.S and Christmas is some frowned upon holiday that only the very brave celebrate, that really starts to get to me (In part due to the negative connotations anything but christianity has in social circles, but let's not go there).

The corporations and the media do not avoid saying 'Merry Christmas' because they're afraid of offending someone, or afraid of expressing their beliefs. The reason they say happy holidays is because, even though Christianity is a majority of people, it is not the only religion in the United States, and it's not the only one with a holiday that falls at the end of the year. Heck, in today's society, implying you're celebrating The Day of Ashura, an Islamic holiday which is a public holiday in other nations, could be enough to get you beaten up, probably by some form of extremist who thinks you're on your way to blow up the White House.

Nobody is trying to take away Christmas. If anything, this constant bickering over the phrase is taking away the right to celebrate anything other than Christmas. Have we really become so narrow minded as a nation that we've forgotten that there are other holidays out there that fall around this time? That we have to call it a 'christmas party', even though Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, and who knows what else may be there, lest we give up our countrys' freedom? What would happen if we called it a Hanukkah party?

This idea that we're trying to oppress Christmas by including others is becoming silly at best and insulting to this nation's background at worst. The mainstream media has noticed that we're not a nation of just one religion (although they seem to be quickly forgetting this fact), and it's time that the American people do as well.