Instead of Christmas

25 December 2009 No Comments

For many people, today is Christmas. For me, it’s Friday. Well, it’s Christmas for me, too, but only in the way that it’s still Super Bowl Sunday even when I have no idea who’s playing, what time the game is on, or even that it’s happening at all until I get to the store and find out the pretzels are all sold out.

Some years, I try to make a blog post about why I don’t celebrate Christmas, and in fact, why I think Christmas is a pretty shitty holiday with some fucked-up traditions. However, these posts always come out really angry and convoluted, and this year, I’m just not feeling it. More so than any other year that has come before, today is really, truly, just a day for me.

However, I’d love to give you something to read anyway, because my Google Reader is not offering me up much to read these last couple of days, and maybe you’re looking for something to read, too. So, I’d like to point you to Joshua’s recent post on people wishing him a merry Christmas. Here’s my favorite excerpt:

When I inform people that I’m not Christian and I don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope that I’m helping to break down the incorrect idea that everyone is just like them. I hope that plays out when it comes time to set public policy on issues like abortion, support for the military and police, drug prohibition, and so forth. If you believe that everyone is just like you, then it makes it easy to marginalize the “few outspoken” who disagree. But if people who are not like you expose that fact, it will turn out that most people are not like you in some significant ways, and I think that makes it harder to marginalize dissenting opinions.

Head over to Jack-Booted Liberal to read the rest of the post.

Tags: Joshua

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From Joshua at Jackbooted Liberal

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