For the life of me, I can't see why "Season's Greetings" is so offensive.
I think I do. Of course, I could be way off. We can only really understand things within our own frameworks so perhaps I'm applying my framework incorrectly to an alien culture.
(Yes, I know that "alien culture" is offensive to some people. But I think it's true that seculars like me and the Christian-centric are two very different cultures that don't know each other at all. So, not being very PC, I'll use the term. <g>)
I think "Season's Greetings" is as scary to them as "God put Bush in the WH" and the like are to me. The Christian-centric are used to their whole world operating in that mode, used to total and unquestioned Christian hegemony. But of late secularism and the acceptance of other religions have chipped away at that hegemony. So, no matter that Christianity is still dominant in this country and Christians make up the vast majority of people with no change in sight, they are reacting to the loss of "what is rightfully theirs"--total and complete domination--as though they were one step away from being a cast-out minority huddled in a ghetto whereas the non-religious like me are the actual outsider minority, although not quite as disenfranchised as we used to be. We have a conflict between two groups who each see themselves as the outsiders, the victims. Makes for a strange fight.
Just as the non-religious see the Ten Commandments rock as bullying and threatening incipient theocracy, they see "Seasons Greetings" as bullying and threatening incipient banishment of religion, IMO.
I have engaged in a lot of discussions about this on SI and over the years have come to tentatively, very tentatively, accept that, rhetoric notwithstanding, Christians don't want a theocracy any more than I do. I think the people who fuss about "Season's Greetings" are those who either haven't yet accepted that the secular don't want to wipe out religion or those who are so consumed by the mandates of evangelicalism to spread the word that anything short of total Christian hegemony is unacceptable. The former are reachable.
Like I said, my understanding may be off. I've tried to get a handle on it by putting the shoe on the other foot. Maybe that's too simplistic but it gives me a way, correctly or incorrectly, to get my head around it. Two alien cultures, each seen as bullying and threatening by the other. |
