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Now Blogging Afresh at Ad Orientem 西儒 - The Western Confucian



Saturday, December 17, 2005

¡Feliz Navidad!
"The fight over the greeting 'Merry Christmas' vs. 'Happy Holidays' may only be solved by speaking Spanish," says Julia Golin in Backstory: The Christmas complex has spread to other faiths:
    Perhaps we should take a page from a culture that doesn't seem to suffer from such complexes. Latin Americans, for example, aren't about to alter the greeting "Feliz Navidad." Like the song says, "Feliz Navidad! Feliz Navidad! I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas...." It doesn't say, "Feliz Día de Fiesta! Feliz Día de Fiesta!" In fact, the Yahoo! dictionary doesn't even have a translation for "holiday" in Spanish....

    Interestingly, the ACLU and the rest of the no-godniks who try to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, "In God We Trust" from currency, and tiny crosses from official county seals likewise don't suffer from this complex when things are in Spanish. As Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young points out, the county from whose seal the cross was removed from is called "Los Angeles" ("the Angels"), just as Santa Fe means "Holy Faith," and Corpus Christi "Body of Christ." So since God doesn't offend when he's Spanish, perhaps we could change the Pledge to "one nation, baja Dios."