Yesterday I had an interesting thing said to me by a reader.

In yesterday's post I mentioned that I was tempted to buy a yarmulke with 'Happy Festivus' embroidered on it. Someone suggested that that might be disrespectful so I decided to ask around.

First I checked around a few places and found out that many Jews wften get their yarmulkes in the color of their favorite sports teams or otherwise have them decorated, which surprised me somewhat.

Having done a little homework, I decided to check. Afterall, though I am a mischievious soul, I am not cruel  or malicious and seriously do not want to offend or disrespect anyone's religion.

So I went to a website I am a member of and took a poll. The results have made me think of a number of things, some of which I will touch upon later.

I simply asked the Jewish community on the website if they would take offense to my wearing a yarmulke embroidered with "Happy Festivus' embroidered. My instincts said that it would not be offensive to most and I was, quite frankly not surprised at the results.

The first several respondents chided me and told me that i ought to rethink the poll and that it was a disrespectful thing to do, but none of these were Jewish. I entered a comment that perhaps the respondants were jumping the gun and that maybe we ought to wait and hear fromthe Jewish community before we started a donnybrook where there wasn't one.

Then the Jewish community started to trickle in with their answers, and would you believe it? Not one single Jew that answered the informal poll had a bad thing to say about it. In fact, one of them offered to send me a yarmulke if I sent him my address. I sent is and as I am writing this the little email thing showed me he had emailed me. Let's see what he has to say.

Whoop! As soon as he gets into the office he'll shoot it off to me. Go figure! Perfect timing!

Earlier today I took yet another, more formal poll asking non-Christians if they were offended with being greeted with "Merry Christmas". Less than 5% of the respondents said it bothered them.

Interesting.

Maybe the poll was tainted, and maybe it wasn't, but any time you get under 5% of much of anything, you don't worry about things.  Five percent of people have an attitude problem, anyway. What interested me were the number of non-Christians that out and out said that 'Happy Holidays' annoys them and the proper greeting was 'Merry Christmas'. My take on this is that they're simply tired of the PC crap.

Let it be said that I would lead the attack on someone who slighted someone out of malice (yet stick up for someone who slighted someone out of innocent ignorance). I am not here in this world to trample people over race or religion.

Still, the results have made me think of the Cleveland Indians arguement of a few years where some people wanted the team renamed. I asked just about every Native American I met back then and I only had a couple that were for it, and to be honest, they were just a couple of youngsters with an attitude, anyway.

There is a rest area on the PA turnpike I stop in that frequently looks like the UN meeting hall in New York. People of every concievable background from African to Amish. Yet everyone seems to get along together pretty well. I commented about this once to someone I was traveling with and someone overheard it and said, "That's because nobody from the government is here to tell us how different we are."

I laughed and shook my head. I had met a kindred soul.

Over the past few years I have slowed down a bit before I start swinging at someone that may have slighted someone else and before I rush to the defense, I make sure that a slight has in fact been committed.

I seem to be getting upset less and less as time goes on.

Maybe we ought to save our energy for real problems than go chasing them where there are none.

With that, I wish everyone a politically incorrect Merry Christmas.




my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/