Happy. Merry. Utah.
I know many people worry about how we greet one another during this holiday season. Christians insist on Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays. Some Jews are offended if someone wishes them Merry Christmas instead of Happy Chanukah. I don’t know anyone who celebrates Kwanzaa or Festivus (for the rest of us) but given human nature, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them were offended by the incorrect holiday greeting. Personally, I am not offended by any greeting I receive at this time of year. I will take all the good wishes offered me, no questions asked.
This is not our first Christmas in Utah but it our first Christmas as residents here. We moved into our new house in South Jordan, Utah on the 19th of December. On December
23, our daughter, Amy, cooked us the best Chanukah we’ve ever had and on the 24th we went out for dinner with our grandkids (and their parents). We drove to our grandkids house to open presents and have breakfast on Christmas Day, then went to see Jumanji in the afternoon. Today it snowed a bit, wet and slushy but enough to keep our record of consecutive Utah white Christmases intact. Friday, we will pick up Tyson, a rescue kitty that I found online before we moved here. I have been kittyless since I lost my friend Claude to cancer and I am anxious to have a furry friend again. He’s not officially a Christmas present but of course, he is.
Moving has been a time consuming, exhaustinLLPg process, and I haven’t had much time to express my holiday wishes to the friends I’ve left behind in California. That is in no way symbolic of how much I care about each of you. My goal … call it a New Years resolution, if you will … is to keep in touch with all of you by phone, by email, and by Facebook or posts on my blog, Older Eyes. But for now, I want to wish you each a … Happy Chanukah … Merry Christmas … Happy Holidays … a Merry Kwanzaa … or a joyful Festivus. You choose any or all of the above. And a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
Explore posts in the same categories: holidaysTags: Christmas, family, friends, Hannukah, moving
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Older Eyes 
December 26, 2019 at 7:01 am
When it comes to greetings and well wishes, the only thing that bothered me was that for several years it was politically incorrect to say Merry Christmas.
You couldn’t send a Christmas.card to a business Client without the worry of offending him or her if you said Merry Christmas. Wait a minute, who’s country is this? You know all the details and ramifications. Did that not bother you? Thanks to, here comes that bad word, Donald Trump. With all his faults, I love
the man. Now I say Merry Christmas without hesitation. He is getting our country back on track to a strong and healthy nation. But you won’t know the health of our nation if you just listen only to CNN. I hope what I’ve expressed doesn’t rile you. I don’t mean too. It’s just hou I feel about my country. I have a friend in our football pool group who would actually hate me for expressing how I feel about President Trump. He became president against all odds. Really think about that and ask why.
December 26, 2019 at 10:45 pm
So, my friend, I’ll try to reply. I come at the holidays from a different point of view. I have been a Catholic, but I have also been an atheist and and an agnostic. I have been married to a Jewish woman who is one of the best people i have ever encountered. Judaism has made more sense to me than any religion. So in my world, it has seemed that it was politically correct NOT to say Merry Christmas. It feels dismissive to Jews to be told they have to say Merry Christmas. Just as Christians feel discounted when people say Happy Holidays, some Jews feel discounted when someone says Merry Christmas when to them, its the channukah season. To me, the answer to whose country is is that it belongs to all of us … Chrstians, Jews, Muslims, agnostcs and atheists. It is my country, too.
I am more conservative than most people I know. As such, I am not opposed to as many of president Trumps policies as many of my friends. What I object to is his style of leadership. I am regarded as a leader in my field. The greatest compliment Ive ever been paid was a. mentor telling ne, “you are the only person I know who can work with anyone.” It seems to me that President Trump is mean spirited and arrogant. I know some think that is the only way to combat the “deep state” but it ou s my experience that respectong the opinion of others is the hallmark of a true leader. As such, your opinions will never rile me. To me, the sign of a true leader is the ability to agree to disagree.