That's insane.

I wonder if this is how the fundies feel around Halloween?

No, they're still craxy.

It's sometimes fun to point out to these people that "Christmas is a secular American holiday" is exactly the same argument that Bill O'Reilly uses constantly.

Even if you accept that Christmas is a secular American cultural holiday - how does he want you to celebrate it? Everybody has different traditions, there's no one thing that everybody does.

I vaguely remember a conversation somewhere or other (was it here? I'm not sure) a year or two ago, when Slate published an article about which Christmas specials are OK to watch in Jewish homes, based on a survey of about five Jewish people about what they watched when they were kids. The list was pretty much the things that I always watched, and one of them was How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Every time I talked to a Jewish person about this article, the immediate response to that mention was a halfway sarcastic, "Well, of course. Clearly the Grinch is Jewish." And we all thought that was funny. But then when I tried that same joke in a mixed group, the reaction from all the Christmas-celebrating people was "Of course the Grinch isn't Jewish! What a horribly antisemitic thing to say!"

Even if you accept that Christmas is a secular American cultural holiday - how does he want you to celebrate it? Everybody has different traditions, there's no one thing that everybody does.

I think he wants me to have a tree and put up lights and wear red and green and stuff like that, because non-Christian people celebrating Christmas will make him more comfortable with his insistence that there's not anything Christian about what he's doing.

I think when people get like that, it's best to remind them what Frankie says.

Also, it's not like there are a shit ton of Haunnaka specials on tv this time of year.

ION: It is fucking freezing in Dallas man! I am so glad we have the underground tunnels downtown. As it was, waiting 8 min for the bus was awful. Having to walk the two and a half bloks outside to the stop would have killed me dead.

Also, it's not like there are a shit ton of Haunnaka specials on tv this time of year.

um, are there ever?

that the way Christmas is celebrated in America is culturally American and has nothing to do with Christianity

AUGH. I hate that argument. If it's the reason you personally feel comfortable celebrating Christmas, fine, but to try to push it on practicing members of other religions is just AUGH.

The nerve of you not validating him, Hil.

I just had that "The Grinch is Jewish" conversation with my husband a while ago - oh, right, because he played Ebenezer Scrooge in an elementary school production of A Christmas Carol and that horrified his mother.