Well a long, protracted, often ridiculous comments section on my post “What’s so wrong with saying “Happy Holidays”? actually bore fruit.
Sometimes it takes a little frustration to get the creative juices flowing. Thanks to an awful, improbable hypothetical argument put forward by a commenter, I was able to come up with a much more realistic analogy about the whole “Happy Holidays” war on Christmas nonsense.
An office plans a monthly birthday party to acknowledge all of the birthdays of the month.
The cake says “Happy birthdays”.
Everyone feels included. They eat cake and enjoy each other.
Except for the ONE pathetic white guy in the corner whose dad owns the company. He sits there, grumbling, “MY birthday is more important than all of these OTHER people’s birthdays. MINE MINE MINE!”
He stomps his foot and has a mantrum.
You see, that’s a completely unlikely hypothetical – and a perfectly good one; since as any fule no*, ‘likeliness’ is not in any way ever a measure of a good hypothetical.
It is in fact completely irrelevant to the quality of a hypothetical.
Now your hypothetical is a good illustration of situations where Christians are offended by people saying Happy Holidays to each other, when they shouldn’t be. Though why you think only white Christians are stupid like that I don’t know.
Now, clearly you feel that by having this ongoing discussion (and yes, it’s a discussion – you say one thing, I say another; repeat – that’s a discussion, you could just ignore me if you don’t want to converse, rather than slamming my arguments, which obviously inclines me to defend them), I’ve been hectoring you – but that’s not my intention, I had one point to make, and I tried to persuade you (unsuccessfully) that I was right, and now I’m just defending my hypothetical.
If you’re bored of talking to me, then stop criticising my perfectly valid hypothetical, and I’ll stop defending it.
Now in what way is my hypothetical ‘awful and improbable’ that yours isn’t?
Who would really say “Happy 1st of the Month” instead of Happy Birthday? No-one.
Who would have a ‘mantrum’ (way to go with demeaning gender biased language) over a cake that includes them? No-one.
Neither hypothetical is likely. Both successfully describe the situation we were out to illustrate… so in what way is my hypothetical rubbish?
*that’s a Molesworth reference.
Thanks for helping me come up with my hypothetical.
Thanks for coming to my blog, this discussion has been enlightening.
No worries, have a nice Christmas and a Happy Holidays.
I too have been educated by this discussion, though not about how some Christians are often idiots, I’m already far too well aware of that unfortunate fact.
“Mantrum.”
Awesome.
Isn’t it?
I think it is a perfect description of privileged pouting.