{"id":61510,"date":"2016-12-26T07:00:45","date_gmt":"2016-12-26T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=61510"},"modified":"2016-12-25T11:25:29","modified_gmt":"2016-12-25T17:25:29","slug":"holidays-or-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=61510","title":{"rendered":"Holidays…Or Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Frankovich on why “Happy Holidays” – regarded by so many Christians as a forced, PC bowdlerization of “Merry Christmas” – is a good and noble greeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many good points – but I liked this one:<\/p>\n

Recall that devout Jews kept a respectful distance from the Holy of Holies and that Gentiles respectful of Judaism kept a respectful distance from the Temple\u2019s inner courts. Devout Jews to this day preserve the Tetragrammaton from contact with hand or mouth \u2014 and hence their references to \u201cAdonai\u201d (Lord), a hedge against the Ineffable, and \u201cHaShem\u201d (the Name), a hedge against the hedge. Recall also that the first of the seven petitions that Jesus formulated in the prayer that he taught his disciples, including us, is that the name of \u201cour Father\u201d be \u201challowed.\u201d Christians translate the Tetragrammaton as \u201cKyrios\u201d (Greek), \u201cDominus\u201d (Latin), \u201cLord\u201d (English, with small caps in the King James Version), and the equivalents in other languages. \u201cThrow not your pearls before swine,\u201d the Lord teaches, meaning, among other things, \u201cBe grateful wherever the character string \u2018C h r i s t \u2014 \u2019 isn\u2019t flashing next to underwear ads on Jumobtrons in Times Square.\u201d Then redouble your gratitude if the word \u201cholidays\u201d enables us to smuggle into secular consumer culture a hint of anything like the transcendent. Most people now think of holidays as primarily days on which they don\u2019t have to work, but even that much takes us halfway to the principle of the Sabbath, the very prototype of the holiday, or holy day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a good article, and you oughtta read the whole thing.<\/p>\n

Here’s the rub; give me a good theological reason to prefer “Happy Holidays” – Frankovich makes a good case – and I’m on board.<\/p>\n

Most of the kommissars of PC who are pushing the idea that “Merry Christmas” is a trigger are not making a theological case. \u00a0 For better or worse, motive counts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Frankovich on why “Happy Holidays” – regarded by so many Christians as a forced, PC bowdlerization of “Merry Christmas” – is a good and noble greeting. Many good points – but I liked this one: Recall that devout Jews kept a respectful distance from the Holy of Holies and that Gentiles respectful of Judaism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faiths-and-their-followers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61511,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61510\/revisions\/61511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}