A real life Scrooge? – AA passenger obejcts to Merry Christmas Wishes
An American Airlines passenger was escorted off the plane at La Guardia (LGA) this morning for getting agitated because crew members repeatedly wished him ‘Merry Christmas’. I know not everyone celebrates Christmas, but really?
Personally I am sick of all this ‘PC’ business. Everyone should have the right to wish someone else Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, or other festive greetings for other festivals. Given Christmas is the predominant holiday being celebrated around the world at this time of the year, why can’t the crew say ‘Merry Christmas’. Unfortunately, the passenger will probably get a ‘Very Merry Christmas’ payout by suing American Airlines for this and settling out of court.
(Full Disclosure – I am not a Christian. But I have a Christmas tree in my house, and yes we exchanged gifts this morning. You can wish me ‘Merry Christmas’, ‘Happy Hanukah’, ‘Eid Mubarak’, ‘Happy Diwali’ or ‘May the Force be with you’, anytime).
Source – Yahoo News.
As an atheist, I can understand the annoyance. Just say Happy Holidays and leave the religious crackpot whackiness to those who believe such nonsense.
@Paul, as a non-Christian (I am Hindu), I personally see Christmas as a commercial holiday more than anything else and hence not bothered by religious message in the greeting 🙂
@Paul As an atheist, a wish of “Merry Christmas” is nothing more than a celebratory greeting. If you cannot deal with that simple truth, then you are beyond hope.
@Paul: just curious… Why is “Happy Holy Days” less religiously whacky or offensive than “Merry Christ Mass “??
I don’t assume well-wishers are proselytizing without additional evidence.
what is a good reason that after 200 yrs we have to change this tradition of Christian-themed holiday by removing ‘Chist’ out of it? Because we need to be politically correct and become a loving peaceful earth village?
I don’t really like holidays, so I don’t like it when people wish me a happy anything, including Thanksgiving. But I’m not going to object or not say anything nice back, as I understand that it’s just part of the culture and is well intentioned! That person on the AA flight sounds like he has issues.
There is no excuse for acting up on a plane. That said, while the crew did not mean to offend it is, arguably, presumptuous to assume that someone celebrates Christmas.
Millions of Americans do not celebrate Christmas. Dallas is also a major business destination with many international passengers. Billions of people around the world do not celebrate Christmas. I doubt the crew ever expresses “good wishes” for the holidays they observe.
Their rationale would probably be that they cannot assume which holidays someone might celebrate, if any. That makes sense. That is why it also makes sense not to assume that everyone else celebrates Christmas and speak to them like they do.
It might be more respectful to express sincere wishes to the people in your life you know celebrate a given day and stick to “thank you for flying with us” when dealing with customers.
Deeper issues at hand with this guy!
@Paul – Hey, why care Paul? It’s the Christmas holiday that people celebrate at this time of year, just like you don’t say Happy Holidays at Ramadan, do you? I’m atheist and I think this PC crap is all totally stupid. Let other people celebrate Christmas if they want – why all the offense? BTW Merry Christmas to you and yours:-)
It just seems to me that he could have picked a better place to have a melt down about people wishing him “Merry Christmas”. Should he be offended? I guess. If your not a Christian why would you celebrate Christmas? It’s a Christian Holiday. Sure people have made it into a santa, material, money making shallow day that starts in like September. I actually don’t know why companies or the government still allow it as a day off. I agree he will likely get a big check out of the deal from the PC police. It’s nice how “diverse” people like to say they are until it comes to Christians. Just to clarify Christ wasn’t really born on December 25th most likely and by the way…”Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year”.
Another atheist here. Umm, we have the holiday off of work today, and it is called Christmas. On all holidays, we generally say happy ‘insert holiday’ or have a great ‘insert holiday’… The only difference is the word Merry. Be happy… because you either get the day off or get paid time and a half to work it!