There are a lot of things in life that it doesn't make sense to get angry about. Traffic, for one. Everyday at rush hour, traffic moves slowly. Yet, every day, millions of Americans are enraged to the point of gunplay by slow-moving traffic. Lines in the supermarket is another one. If you go to the grocery store anytime after 5:00 pm on a weekday, there will be lines at the checkout counters. It's as certain as the tides. Yet, it is impossible to go to the grocery store at those times of day and not see someone red-faced, grinding their teeth and fuming about having to wait in line. The mind reels.But, possibly, the dumbest thing of all to get mad about is Christmas. Yet, people do. Bill O'Reilly is always yelling about the War on Christmas or witness Christopher Hitchens' hilariously incendiary humbuggery on Slate, in which the British curmudgeon compares Santa to a fascist dictator.
Whether you are Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, a Buddhist or proudly professing atheist, you have to be unbelievably cantankerous and, possibly, unbalanced, to be bothered by the Christmas season. Anyone threatened by "Merry Christmas" from a clerk or co-worker -- who sees a wish for yuletide joy as evangelizing -- is clearly insecure in their own beliefs, whatever they may be.
When someone wishes you "Merry Christmas," they are, at worst, saying "Enjoy the legal holiday on December 25th." More likely, the clerk or co-worker is wishing you happiness the best way they can. Someone bitter enough to feel oppressed by people expressing good cheer should need a license to leave the house. Anyone who feels their First Amendment rights are compromised by public Christmas displays; by a Christmas tree in a town square, for instance, has gone insane. Or, at the very least, has a terrible understanding of Constitutional law. The First Amendment says the government should not establish a state religion; not that people should protected from any exposure to a faith not their own. The amendment also says Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of any faith. When some overzealous interest group gets a nativity scene removed from a town square, they are doing precisely that.
