Merry Christmas(or not)

dont start

 

Um, start what?

Regards,
CraigG

Answer: one.
Question: How many psychics does it take to change a light bulb.

 

The great majority of atheists I have known don't care too much about this stuff. They are fine with people saying "Merry Christmas" to them and don't have any problem at all with people who want to pray in school. It's the people who want to put pressure on others to hold a certain religious belief that they have a problem with, especially in a coercive situation that that's hard to avoid.

 

not...

 

Merry Christmas from the Western Front, 24 December 1914.

 

There have been negative rumors about Wal-mart (yeah, bet you're suprised, lol) that Wal-Mart employees are required to say "Happy Holidays" and not "Merry Christmas." Would just like to say, having read the policy statement firsthand as an employee of Sam's Club, that there is nothing we are required to say or required not to say. We can say Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Have a Nice Day, or ehatever we feel like pretty much, so long as it is friendly and polite. If we know the customer in question well enough to know what partciular holiday they celebrate, it is encouraged to give the appropriate holiday greeting to that person, for the same reson it is encouraged to greet them by name if possible.

As for my own person beliefs on the matter, way I see it is basically based on 3 assumptions:

1. Majority of people in this country celebrate Christmas.
2. The vast majority of those that don't wouldn't be offended in the least if I told them "Merry Christmas."
3. On the off chance that anyone actually is offended, they would probably be consoled with an apology after the fact.

So I go right on saying Merry Christmas to everybody. Nobody once has been offended by it. Or if they were, not seriously enough to say anything about it.

P.S. Local radio talk show in my area had the whole "Merry Christmas" issue as a topic... dozens of callers called in to basically say "I am Jewish/Muslim
/Buddhist/Hindu/Wiccan/atheist/ etc., and I wouldn't be the least bit offended if someone told me 'Merry Christmas.'" The enitre show, only one person called in to say he would be offended... basically said "When someone tells me 'Merry Christmas,' I get chills up my spine..." to which another caller commented "I feel sorry for anyone who gets chills up their spie if told 'Merry Christmas...' man, if someone called him a jerk, he'd probably end up in the hospital!"

Seriously... this should be a complete non-issue.

 

Guess it's one of those things that you hear about and think, hm, fits in the picture - just like the Wal-Mart rules concerning "more than just friendly" relationships among employees. (Which was not just a rumor but official company policy that according to a recent court decision is unconstitutional here in Germany.) So people hear or read such a "Happy Holidays" greeting regulation and are inclined to believe it. Maybe it was just some local "directive", maybe pure legend, who knows ...

And while I am not religious, I do not feel offended at all when somebody wishes me Merry Christmas. After all, I say that ("Frohe Weihnachten") myself. Does IMO not have anything to do with forcing any religious preferences upon others. But quite a lot with being friendly to others.

Christian

 

There is a new movie in Europe http://www.merrychristmas-derfilm.de/ which is based on exactly that true story, by the way.



Merry Christmas!

Christian

 

I wonder how the wove the beautiful woman into the story?

If you saw it, tell me if they included the event wherein a 6'5" Prussian lad4, reputed to be a very tough and committed soldier, challenged the Scots to send out one of theirs for a bayonette fight in no-mans land.

 

That scene you mentioned is not in there as far as I remember, but then the movie tells a story based on historical facts without being a documentary. It is based on the book "The Small Peace in the Great War" by Michael Jürgs (review from 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1082392,00.html in English) which describes what happened in December 1914.

In the movie, Anna Sörensen (Diane Krüger), a soprano singer who wants to meet her husband Nikolaus Sprink (Benno Fürmann), star tenor at the Berlin Opera. She is then allowed to see him near the "Western" front. So that is how the woman gets in there. Then there is the French lieutenant Audebert (Guillaume Canet), the German lieutenant Horstmayer (Daniel Brühl), the Anglican priest Palmer (Gary Lewis) and a few others. Sprink's singer voice, by the way, is the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón ...

Christian

 

Can't speak for what policy may have existed in German Wal-Marts... I know no such policy existed in the US, though for obvious ethical reason dating those that are direct superiors or subordinates is discouraged, which is hardly unusual compared to almost all companies' policies. I'm not sure to what degree Wal-Marts in Germany have autonomy to set their own policies and to what degree they follow corporation-wide policies.

I do know however that a lot of antil-Wal-Mart rumors tend to crop up, usually by people who know them not to be true and want to intentionally damage Wal-Mart's reputation, or by people who believe them to be true because it fits with their assumptions about the company, much like some people believe anything negative said about Geroge W. Bush regardless of how much evidence there is to support it (the whole fake National Guard memo is a perfect example). People who seem to dislike Wal-Mart usually do so for two reasons: Wal-Mart doesn't care to hire union workers (even though they pay as good or better pay and benefits as union workers would receive anyway; one thing Wal-Mart does that unions tend to dislike is to base raises on merit rather than senirotiy, something that really needs to be done for teachers too, to save education in this country, imo!), and they tend to outcompete smaller, less efficient "mom'and-pop" companies in smalle towns (despite the fact that the town benefits from the lower prices and increased jobs, some people seem to think it's "unfair" to smaller businesses that can't compete... this is more a complaint against a free market economy in general rather than Wal-Mart in specific. Nobody's pointing a gun at your head and frocing you to shop at Wal-Mart... don't like it, go across the street and pay more in protest if you so desire.).

Not to say Wal-Mart has a perfect record in all things... no company run by human beings ever will... but take any rumor against the company with a grain of salt and only believe it when it has supporting evidence. Always be suspicious of any rumor from an obviously biased source with a political axe to grind.

 

This was not anything Germany-specific, I think. Earlier today I tried to (quickly) find some English language sources and came up with these:
"A recent case involving German subsidiaries of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. highlights the difficulties U.S.-listed multinationals have in developing a global compliance program."
http://www.mwe.com/index.cfm/fuseac...t_id/72a25f69-9c19-4448-a6b2-0195fd9476bf.cfm
(Scroll down to the "Sarbanes-Oxley Hotlines v. German Labor and EU Data Protection Laws" article.) Another text is here:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1612110.html

But that policy by itself was not the point I was trying to make anyway. As for those "No Christmas" allegations, seems that was brought up by an organization called Catholic League. But it seems the issue has been resolved.

Christian