Happy Holidays to you all! Get bent, FOX news. Let everyone celebrate the season. Now, I am off to prepare for Festivus at my house.

  • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    “Goodbye” exists because of 15th century chatspeak. It’s a highly abbreviated version of “God be with ye”

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    11 months ago

    That whole debate is one of the dumbest things to come out of America.

    The rest of the world doesn’t worry about it, because Christmas is like 90% secular. The Christians do their thing today, and leave the rest of us to celebrate Christmas with friends and family and too many cold cuts of meat. You can say happy holidays and nobody’s gonna get upset, but even as a non-Christian I’m more likely to wish you a merry Christmas.

    (The poms and their “happy Christmas” are weird though. Just sounds wrong.)

    • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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      11 months ago

      In Danish you don’t even have a way of saying “happy holidays”. It’s just “glædelig jul”.

      • TheMurphy@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        And ‘jul’ comes from the nordic word ‘yule’ which means Christmas before religion high jacked it.

        Yule is much older than Christmas, dating back to the viking age. And they have similar traditions.

    • prole@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      FYI, the majority of Americans don’t give a shit either and think it’s embarrassingly stupid.

    • clearleaf@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The whole thing is tilting at windmills. Nobody gives a shit what you say but they want to fight this supposed force out there trying to control what people say. It doesn’t exist in a way where it will ever matter.

    • ThenThreeMore@startrek.website
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      11 months ago

      (The poms and their “happy Christmas” are weird though. Just sounds wrong.)

      As a Brit I’ve never heard happy Christmas. It’s always merry Christmas. Then it’s happy new year.

    • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It just proves you can convince conservatives to be angry and scared about literally anything.

    • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Fyi, “happy Christmas” is just the normal phrasing in the UK. “Merry Christmas” didn’t start to spread until A Christmas Carol was published.

  • thann@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Which is why, to piss of the Christians this year, we all have to say “happy solstace”

    • sab@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      In Scandinavia we never stopped calling the holiday by it’s pagan name - jul.

      We’ve been told for a thousand years now that it’s somehow supposed to refer to the birth of Christ, but the celebration is older than Christianity and nobody knows for sure the origin of it’s name. As far as me and my family is concerned, it’s a pagan holiday.

      Happy to celebrate with my Christian friends though, there’s nothing wrong with being inclusive.

      God jul!

      • DashboTreeFrog@discuss.online
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        11 months ago

        Woah, I’m guessing that’s where yule as in yuletide in English comes from. A lot of Christmas traditions came out of Scandinavia so makes sense if true. Gonna look up some Jul info now.

        God Jul!

        • sab@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          Bingo!

          Christmas traditions are a fun mix of things. The modern Santa Claus is mostly a mix of Saint Nicholas and a bunch of continental European traditions, but the pointy red hat is the product of being what we refer to as a nisse - a mythical creature closely related to gnomes.

          We have long traditions of leaving food out for the nisse living in the barn for Christmas. And Santa is not named after Saint Nicholas over here - we call him julenissen. The Christmas gnome, if you will.

        • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Similar thing with “Easter”, which comes from the name of Ēostre, the Germanic goddess of Spring. The origins of that holiday have nothing to do with Christianity, but the day and name were hijacked by Christians sometime in the mid-2nd century.

    • ares35@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      instead of being buried under 2-3 feet of snow, it was 55 degrees (F) today, so happy global warming works too.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I like to say that and blessed yule. I figure if Christian’s get to throw a hissy fit about it being their religious holiday my pagan ass gets to wish other people to have a nice version of my religious holiday.

  • MartinXYZ@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Some of these, especially Valentine’s day, could also be labeled “commercial” but I guess that’s the nature of capitalism to commercialize any kind of festivities.

    • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Tbf, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day at least were created specifically by Hallmark to sell cards. So they were created as capitalistic commercial scams…

  • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Word usage changes over time, often not retaining its original meaning, as the article points out. I find it more interesting how the European use is more broad, where Americans separate the individual recreation from work or school into the term vacation.

  • OpenStars@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    I thought originally it meant like Merry Christmas + Happy New Year, bc professionals might take that whole week off so like “see ya next year Bob, enjoy your holidays!” (plural)

    Then some people started using it to throw in like Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid al-Fitr / end of Ramadan, plus there’s Buddhist, Hindu, Hispanic / Latin American (Las Posadas), Scandinavian (Lussinatta), German (Krampusnacht), Chinese (Dongzhi Festival), and in UK/Canada/Australia/New Zealand. there’s Boxing Day afterwards, etc.

    Okay so Diwali is a bit of a stretch, being more than a month earlier but it still feels like it fits:-). The rest all occur within about a month of one another, so saying “Happy Holidays” is by definition inclusive of others who may or may not share your particular religious belief structure.

    Which ofc is why Faux News had to go to war against it, promoting instead the Christmasgasm that Jesus most definitely invented (/s btw bc rather, everything He ever said or did goes directly against what they are trying to claim it is all about). But fuck Fox, do what you want, and I wish you Happy Holidays (whatever form they may take for you:-).

  • CCL@links.hackliberty.org
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    11 months ago

    St. Valentine’s day did not start as a secular celebration. St. Valentine lived in what is now Turkey, he became known as the patron saint of love because he used to marry Christians in secret when it was illegal to do so under Islamic rule.

  • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Happy Holy Days, which encompass both liturgical seasons, Advent and Christmas for a total of 36-37 Holy Days. And is the first liturgical season of the year.

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Welcome: Now that you have come, I hope you are well.

    LOL, and drop the war on Christmas stuff OP. That’s been played out for years, no one’s talking about it any longer. Not even Fox could keep up the stupidity.

    Same for Xmas.

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Welcome: Now that you have come, I hope you are well.

    LOL, and drop the war on Christmas stuff OP. That’s been played out for years, no one’s talking about it any longer. Not even Fox could keep up the stupidity.

    Same for Xmas.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 months ago

      Ummm maybe someone should tell Fox News they don’t do war on Christmas stories anymore.

      They’re not the only ones either.

      Sean Hannity also literally just produced a movie about the war on Christmas (‘Jingle Smells’).

      I’m glad you’re not seeing it but there is a sizable number of people who think that way, it’s not pushed to the edges of society and without mainstream support.