Passover has all the good songs, anyway.

I know it would be rhetorically silly of me to compare Handel’s Messiah to “I Had A Little Dreidel” but I’ll admit to thinking about comparing them.

That would be like comparing Handel’s Judas Maccabeus to “Jingle Bells”!

That said, I noticed that the principal of T&G’s school closed her memo with a “Merry Christmas” and I thought that was unnecessarily restrictive and close-minded about the way recipients may be spending holidays. That *always* pisses me off. And as for the distinction among Christians, well, there’s been enough persecution over the years that ought to count for something. Maybe you and I don’t see it, but history certainly says otherwise. Protestantism and Catholicism were battling long after one would think, even in this country.

As for the etymological on holiday: I don’t understand your beef with that at all. The OED provides a solid basis for it.

Michelle, I do not agree with everything in those links, but they’re all discussions of the “what to do in December if you’re Jewish?” theme. Mostly I’m trying to say that the trees and lights and Santa are not secular, and don’t try to act as if they are.

I grant there are distinctions between Christians, a few I know about and many I do not. But I don’t think they are relevant for this discussion, just like the distinctions between Jews are not relevant. I brought it up because there were complaints on TDM about this glomming together of Christians, which is fine, except that it was by people who glom together all sorts of other religions.

The etymology game bores me. Holiday *used to mean* holy day. But it does not anymore, and it doesn’t tell us anything useful about the word’s meaning today.

Bored by etymology?! Oh Wolfa!

Q, true. I am not a huge fan of etymology in general, I find it’s fairly boring, and I should have said rather that etymology as argument is not a reasonable argument. But see above about not bothering with thoughtful.

But it is strange to me that people should think that the symbols (other than the commercial ones) are secular. Or that Happy Holidays is inadequate. On the other hand, I’m all for celibrating as many holidays as we have friends in the area to celibrate them with.

Though the friend who served ham at sedar seemed a little off base.

I think the problem is the multiple meanings of secular, a word ill-defined in this debate. It’s not *religion-neutral*, but it may or may not be religious.

The real explosion came with the Coca-Cola marketing move and the modern Santa Claus (vs. St. Nikolas, a nice Greek historical figure with an observed, but not required, feast day).

The modern tangle of commercialism has created a major issue, down to making the Festival of Lights into a major holiday in the States, which can puzzle visitors.

I’m not familiar with Timbits … guess I need to google them, and avoid them ;)