{"id":1199,"date":"2012-12-23T07:22:45","date_gmt":"2012-12-23T12:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/?p=1199"},"modified":"2012-12-23T07:22:45","modified_gmt":"2012-12-23T12:22:45","slug":"you-can-wish-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/2012\/12\/23\/you-can-wish-me\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can Wish Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think of you every time I wish someone Merry Christmas he said. Thanks I said but I knew where this was going.\u00a0 He had launched a campaign to wish everyone a Merry Christmas instead of letting the words Happy Holidays pass his lips. This from a faithful church going had lifesaving open heart surgery, second chance at life man who I think of as one of the nicest human beings I know\u2026and who still owes me a glass of red and a co-written blog post.<\/p>\n

He thinks of me because I\u2019m ok with Happy Holidays, you can wish me Happy Holidays and I appreciate that you wish me well.\u00a0 I\u2019m no longer under the illusion that everyone celebrates Christmas.\u00a0 I don\u2019t presume to know everyone\u2019s faith or what they believe in if they believe in anything.\u00a0 I don\u2019t push my faith on others and I don\u2019t want them to push their faith on me.\u00a0 Fact is I thought my faith was faltering for a long time but it wasn\u2019t faith I was questioning it was religion and its rigidity and exclusivity and non-inclusiveness that was in question.\u00a0 As I always say, \u201cGod ain\u2019t mad at me, I\u2019m doing good work\u201d.<\/p>\n

I am blessed to know and love many different kinds of people these days.\u00a0 I\u2019m no longer cocooned in a world of \u201cmy people\u201d the way I was when I was growing up.\u00a0 Things have changed, for the better in my opinion, when I can learn from different faiths and ethnicities and respect and love them just the same as if they were \u201cgoing about with Merry Christmas on their lips\u201d.<\/p>\n

I love this season.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t always but my world has changed drastically and continues to change as I move through it with altered vision and perspective.\u00a0 The more I look around the more I see the similarities and less I see the differences.\u00a0 So if saying Happy Holidays is offensive to you I suggest you look at your valued collection of friends and colleagues and see if they might appreciate hearing that instead of Merry Christmas.\u00a0 If Happy Holidays screams liberalism to you then perhaps you might want to step out of the political ring and into the town you live in where we help each other and say hello with full hearts every day.<\/p>\n

Not acknowledging how diverse our towns, states and country has become is limiting yourself to the \u201cold ways\u201d that were none too happy for our ancestors who came from somewhere else and made a difference in our lives. Surely we\u2019ve come farther than that.\u00a0 Happy Holidays is a celebratory cry out for and from those who have embraced this country with their own traditions and love of freedom.<\/p>\n

Open that now perfect heart my friend and see that you are surrounded by people who are living and loving this country and this season as much as you think you do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think of you every time I wish someone Merry Christmas he said. Thanks I said but I knew where this was going.\u00a0 He had launched a campaign to wish everyone a Merry Christmas instead of letting the words Happy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pause-points"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27hQ5-jl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1204,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions\/1204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}