“Merry Christmas” naysayers are making too much noise, according to one Canadian rabbi.
Rabbi Dr. Reuven P. Bulka shared his thoughts on the holiday greetings debate with Bring-Back-Merry-Christmas.com, a group seeking to bury the “silly fear” of political correctness around wishing people a “merry Christmas.”
In recent years, there's been much debate surrounding the so-called "war on Christmas," which includes everything from whether people should wish each other "merry Christmas" or a more all-encompassing "happy holidays" to governments putting up what they call "holiday" trees, as opposed to Christmas trees. In 2011, one Ottawa-area school principal was called a "grinch" when the annual Christmas concert was turned into a multicultural holiday-themed craft night, according to cireport.ca, and many similar stories have been reported over the past decade.
As of Tuesday, over 4,000 people have signed Bring-Back-Merry-Christmas.com's Change.org petition asking North American CEOs to help "bring back Merry Christmas" by protecting the use of the traditional saying.
“I'm happy when everyone else is happy, so why would I want to deny them that and say some generic thing?” Rabbi Bulka explains in a YouTube video. He goes on to question the unintended consequences of the growing usage of "happy holidays."
“I have a strong suspicion that not everyone’s motivation is actually pure, that in fact people would want to make of Christmas a holiday as opposed to a holy day or to dilute it of its religious moorings – that’s something that none of us should be doing to any faith – and if that’s what this is all about, then it’s pernicious.”
Whether or not these are the motivations, there are undoubtedly some who will welcome back "merry Christmas" with open arms — if not necessarily early Christmas music.
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