Christmas cards

I got a cool Christmas card this year. When I opened it up, it played part of Linus's monologue of what Christmas is all about. YouTube has it here in case you're curious.

These days there's a lot of hype about whether people should say "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas," and I think both sides have good points. Happy Holidays is good for people in heterogenous cultures (such as the U.S.) where you don't even know if the person celebrates Christmas.

But I agree that there has been an over-sterilization of the holiday season. I think the beliefs Linus explains in "Charlie Brown Christmas" would probably make it unacceptable to air if it wasn't Charlie Brown. Or if it was written today, they might just leave out all of the even-remotely-possibly controversial stuff.

Though I dislike trite sayings like "Jesus is the reason for the season" (winter is caused by the Earth's axial tilt, and defining "the season" as "the Christmas season" seems redundant), I like the way Charlie Brown Christmas dealt with the issue openly and directly. It's too bad there aren't more shows like that.

Meanwhile, in China Christmas is catching on, though not necessarily the parts we'd like. Reuters had a good story about how commercialism is spreading among young Chinese. Source