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PC gone mad?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Story
I know we all love a good 'PC gone mad' story, so we can bitch and moan about the insanity of it all, but after reading this, I do wonder how much of it is actually true.
I work for a greeting card manufacturer. In fact, I work for the one who designed the card pictured in that article, and we laughed our heads off when we read this. In the last 6 months I have read the word Christmas so often it doesn't even look like a word anymore. Somewhere around 99.5% of our Christmas range includes the word 'Christmas'. Yes, we do make cards with 'Season's Greetings' on, but for a very good reason - because people ask for them (usually sending from businesses and not wanting too personal a message). The entire article is utter nonsense.
Which leads me to wonder how much of the whole PC brigade issue is entirely fabricated purely to get people's backs up. Particularly Radio 1, who would have us believe that one particular word was so potentially offensive that they should edit it out of a song that has been played without complaint for 20 years, but were quite happy to repeat it half hourly on their news bulletins.
Is it PC gone mad, or is it us gone gullible?
I know we all love a good 'PC gone mad' story, so we can bitch and moan about the insanity of it all, but after reading this, I do wonder how much of it is actually true.
I work for a greeting card manufacturer. In fact, I work for the one who designed the card pictured in that article, and we laughed our heads off when we read this. In the last 6 months I have read the word Christmas so often it doesn't even look like a word anymore. Somewhere around 99.5% of our Christmas range includes the word 'Christmas'. Yes, we do make cards with 'Season's Greetings' on, but for a very good reason - because people ask for them (usually sending from businesses and not wanting too personal a message). The entire article is utter nonsense.
Which leads me to wonder how much of the whole PC brigade issue is entirely fabricated purely to get people's backs up. Particularly Radio 1, who would have us believe that one particular word was so potentially offensive that they should edit it out of a song that has been played without complaint for 20 years, but were quite happy to repeat it half hourly on their news bulletins.
Is it PC gone mad, or is it us gone gullible?
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Comments
Which part do you agree with?
My point is that none of it IS censored. He is making an issue where there is none. And it's obviously having the desired effect, on you at least.
There are fewer overtly religious cards at Christmas than there used to be, that's true, but that's not anything to do with offending anyone, it's because people don't buy them.
I think the Queen's Birthday should be an extra holiday.
They get a holiday in Australia and New Zealand - why don't we get a day off work as well?
http://goaustralia.about.com/cs/eventsfestivals/a/queensbirthday.htm
:yes:
Goes at least as far back as Victorian England.
Straw:
"What we celebrate on December 25 is not the season, it is Christ's birth.
Words have meaning and there's a very good word for this in one language - Christmas."
'We' celebrated the season long before the word 'Christmas' was coined and applied to a date which probably doesn't match up to the alleged birth of Jesus, so if if anyone wants to get sniffy...
Straw has become something of a joke, now.
Christmas is a Christian celebration (well, with Pagan roots but these days, Christian) and shouldn't really be celebrated by non-Christians (including atheists) anyway. It's a joke... I wish I didn't have to, it pisses me off. :yeees:
I don't think anybody who isn't a practising Christian should get the day off or celebrate it. Maybe we should have another day though.
And adults do celebrate it, by getting ratarsed (which is contrary to a religion which says your body is your temple).
As well as the thousands of different cards with the word Christmas on it, some of them now offer different ones for those who are not Christians and do not associate themselves with the word.
Big bloody deal.
Turned out that 'Winterval' was just a trade festival held in the area a few weeks before Christmas, and it had no connection with Christmas at all. Its an interesting psychological phenomenon though, like all recurring urban myths it points to a real fear in the collective psyche.
Anyhoo, Happy Christmas, everyone!
(I wonder if 'Happy Chrimbo!' would be seen as kowtowing to PC, like 'Truth, justice and... all that stuff'?)
Why not? They didn't invent the December 25th celebration, they merely chose a new meaning for it. What if the non-religious did get an entitlement to their own national holiday, and what if they followed in the Christian tradition of picking an existing national holiday of another religion, and taking it over? I don't know, maybe, December 25th?
But in one regard I agree with you. I suspect the church would greatly oppose any move to remove Christmas as a national holiday. That would do far more to destroy the Christian tradition of the country than a few card manufacturers writing Seasons Greetings.
And on that, I counted the first 12 cards I could find in our house, and 10 said Happy Christmas, or some variation of it. So as usual, it's bullshit gone mad, rather than PC gone mad.
it is PC gone insane
Halloween can be 'all hallows eve', which comes before 'all saints day' or Samhain, which is Pagan.
But surely then you could adopt the traditions of Eid and say you're not celebrating it.
Because it's atheists, some hardline anti-religious atheists benefitting from a Christian celebration. Some dressing their house up, gving presents, having advent calenders ect.... Don't you find it a bit hypocritical?
I agree, it would. The church would have a hissy fit and cry Christianophobia or something and go boo-hooing to all twelve practicing Christians who go to church that day.
My beliefs are closer to Paganism. Had a talk to my Mum and she said I don't have to go to hers for Chrismas once I graduate, so will be doing so at Yule instead.
Christmas is just a fucking joke anyway. Not only is it not took seriously by most of the population, but it's just an excuse for people to spend money and get pissed and eat until they're bloated and constipated.
I don't really give a shit about cards not saying 'Happy Christmas'. If you're not a Christian, you shouldn't care.
Presumably you will be expecting Christians who celebrate Christmas not to parttake in some of the traditions that have nothing to do with the birth of Jesus? Christmas tree, Christmas lights, kiss under the mistletoe etc.
Sounds good to me
Back on topic, I like "Seasons Greetings", despite being Christian. But for the last couple of years I haven't sent Christmas cards anyway and give the money to one of the charities I work for.
(That makes sod all sense, right?)
Yep.
The whole idea of Jesus being born in Winter was all part of a wider plan by the Church to eradicate Pagan traditions and replace them with Christian one's to help the process of assimilation into Christian culture in Pagan countries in Europe, worked well dontcha think?
Yes there was. There was also a 'lamb of god' before Jesus. Christianity has simply recycled a lot of older Pagan religions in to its own.
It really does not remove the fact though that Christmas today is a Christian celebration, whatever its roots. That people celebrate the Christian elements and not the Pagan... Unless of course, you celebrate on the 21st which is the winter solstice (of course speaking of neopaganism, sources of what the Celts did are few and far between, especially speaking of pre-reneissance druids... Although because of the Roman calender and a forthcoming leap year technically it was the 22nd).
lol if you stripped Christmas of all its Pagan elements, there'd be nothing left!
He was allegedly born on the Feast of Tabernacles - which is around September.