{"id":930,"date":"2005-12-18T20:50:44","date_gmt":"2005-12-19T01:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=930"},"modified":"2005-12-18T20:50:44","modified_gmt":"2005-12-19T01:50:44","slug":"the-jokes-less-funny-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=930","title":{"rendered":"The joke’s less funny this year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I’ve argued in favor of calling the office Christmas Party a Christmas Party, since that’s what it is. If generic christians really and truly wanted to be ecumenical, they’d also hold Purim parties and Diwali parties — they’d really celebrate when other ethicities party, instead of condescendingly including Hannuka with Christmas.
\nLast season, the war on Christmas seemed like a joke – a joke on the humorless, paranoid ultra-Christian scrooges who managed to sustain a persecution complex when they’re part of the majority culture.
\nThis year, it’s not so funny anymore.
\nI’m not offended when someone untentionally wishes me a Merry Christmas. But I do appreciate it when people who know I’m Jewish say Happy Hannukah. The point isn’t about people in the minority being offended. It’s about people in the majority being considerate. So the “war on Christmas” folks are waging a war on politeness. But I’m getting the sneaking suspicion that it’s worse than that.
\nWishing a “Merry Christmas” becomes a test of club membership. If a non-Christian doesn’t eagerly welcome the greeting, we’re “them”, not “us”. What the “war-on-Christmas” people are trying to do is to subtly and insidiously create the impression that people who aren’t Christian and aren’t faking it are somehow less American.
\nIt’s good to see that ACLU Texas<\/a> is prosecuting the war on Christmas with the vigor it deserves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I’ve argued in favor of calling the office Christmas Party a Christmas Party, since that’s what it is. If generic christians really and truly wanted to be ecumenical, they’d also hold Purim parties and Diwali parties — they’d really celebrate when other ethicities party, instead of condescendingly including Hannuka with Christmas. Last … Continue reading “The joke’s less funny this year”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prDRq-f0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}