Putting the happy back into Happy Holidays

author: jael bartnik | multimedia editor

Christmas time is here/Courtesy of Flickr

Take a moment to appreciate the holidays

Now that the holiday season has come and gone, we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Having your ears bombarded by the same Christmas carols covered by different artists, and almost being trampled by shoppers is enough to make anyone question the importance of this holiday. It’s hard to avoid having a crisis of Charlie Brown-level proportions when this holiest of holiday is and has been a way for corporations to sell products to eager shoppers. Let’s not forget the notorious Coca-Cola Santa ads that are still used to sell soda.

I don’t have an enormous beef with Christmas. But I would just like to establish a critical point through this rant: not everyone in Canada and the U.S. celebrates fricking Christmas. I am thoroughly irritated by folks who get up in arms when I say “Happy Holidays” because I’m trying to take the Christ out of Christmas.

Let’s get real, Jesus would be rolling his eyes if he had to listen to people’s rants about the “war on Christmas,” and how Starbucks cups need to be more Christmas-y (never forget the red cups scandal of 2016). If you listened to Jesus at all, you would realize that looking past one another’s differences, embracing fellow humans, and treating each other as equals is probably more important than plastering “Merry Christmas” on every fucking billboard and store window. He’d also have a thing or two to say about how maybe you stinky buttheads that spend all that time referencing his words to justify your garbage racist/Islamophobic/anti-semetic behavior.

If you think about what Christmas is often meant to represent to most people (peace and goodwill toward your fellow humans), you will realize the flaw here. Perspective, people. This argument is stupid. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, and even if they do, there are many other cultural practices that have nothing to do with this argument. Need I remind people that a lot of what we know as Christmas traditions originated from Pagan or pre-Christian celebrations? Christmas lands on the winter solstice for a reason because it was easier to convert non-Christians

If your Christmas needs to be Christ-like, remember what Christmas is about. Regardless of what you celebrate around this time of year, I just want all of you to know that I hope you had a fantastic, well-rested holiday, and I hope you were surrounded by family, friends, and lovely humans who accept and love you regardless of religion, sexuality, gender identity, race, or socio-economic status.           Because that is why we say happy holidays: to include everyone and to show some love around the bleakest, coldest time of the year and share what we have. So please get over your Merry Christmas trip. I am pretty sure prejudice is rewarded with a sizeable lump of coal, or better yet, a visit from Krampus the Christmas devil. Not everyone celebrates it, and just because you do, doesn’t mean we have to … on that note, Happy Holidays.