The festival they took over from others is now being turned into a non-religious festival…and they do not like it.

Well, we did it to ourselves, so I don’t see what cause we have to complain.

Anyone have a scan of what these cards look like? I’d like to see.

It’s a pretty small graphic, but you can see it at the Borders UK site.

I had a christian comment on my blog that she thought the card was brilliant because she saw it as a “call for the “faithless” to come” (to god, to church, to christianity?).

Dale, I consider myself shouted at

Dale, I consider myself shouted at

I’m wondering why Borders even bothered in the first place. Were they trying to be cute?

Not so much cute or even funny as it was clever(ish). Seriously, how amusing do you expect a marketing department to be? The Borders folks are all about books and writing and words, so yes, the play on words is something that would amuse them. Also, the British sense of humor is different from ours. This was only the UK Borders, a fact which is absent in the news articles I saw.

As they say, once you have to explain humor, it pretty much isn’t funny anymore.

What is with this crazy sensitivity?

Using us-vs-them paranoia to enhance solidarity and suppress dissent is as old as the hills, and belongs to no specific group. Certain christian leaders and public figures encourage them to feel persecuted and interpret every possible slight as a deliberate insult, even an outright attack. It’s manufactured, not inherent, although a tendency to do this probably is a deep-rooted part of human nature.

It happens in all kinds of groups, regardless of culture, anytime the group is threatened, or even just if their leaders tell them they are threatened. Look at what happened after we declared war on Iraq, and how long did it take us to wake up from that? With Bill O-Reilly still in a frenzy over the ‘war on christmas” that he invented, who knows how long it will take for Americans to wake up from this?

What surprises me most is that this was a British micro-furor. Are there any UK folk here who could shed some light on why this is happening there? I hate to think the Brits are listening to same crap we do, but maybe they are.

http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/thinking/archive/2007/12/10/it-s-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-xmas.aspx

Nice, but I have one complaint:
Could you please rename “Xmas 2008 Blue” to “Christmas 2008 Blue” and “XmasSkins” to “ChristmasSkins”? …
This is a slap in the face to christian programmers who actually remember what Christmas is about.

A slap in the face? Seriously? How is abbreviating christmas to Xmas offensive? I suppose it is offensive that I didn’t capitalise christmas also? What is with this crazy sensitivity?