Better English: Brits or Americans

Obama celebrated a Hindu holiday, a Muslim holiday, and has a Christmas tree. Lazar would disagree, but I think Obama's a Unitarian more than a Christian. Since he lives in the US, he can be whatever he wants to be, but I certainly don't celebrate Ramadan.

I don't think he celebrated Hanukkah, but maybe I missed that. Usually he sends the holiday greetings in various languages. I wonder if he would send Hanukkah greetings in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino and Arabic...

<<But these holidays are Christmas anyways. We celebrate Christian nativity of Christ and that is the reason why there are holidays. If there is nothing to celebrate for the Jews, Muslims or other strange people then they should work instead of taking holidays.>>

*Slaps forehead in disbelief*

Well, I guess someone should have told the Christians that when they created Christmas on and around prominent Pagan holidays, which preceded them by centuries if not millennia. But, what can I say. Those Christians just wanted Saturnalia and Yule off of work. Oh, I am forgetting something Hanukkah is actually about two centuries older than Christmas. So, the Christians must have wanted that time off work too.

Damian: Why is it that you always seem to want to judge an entire nation on one particular incident? Just because one guy said happy holidays and wished others a happy Hanukkah, doesn't mean the entire U.S. does this. I know you have never been to the U.S., but surely you have seen an American Christmas movie sometime in your life. We have "Christmas Specials" on practically every channel between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Stores, homes, federal and state offices are decorated with Christmas trees. Radio stations play "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" and "Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas". Schools stage performances of "The Christmas Carol". Yes, many people use "Happy Holiday" cards for more formal greetings of the season. Why? Well, sometimes you do not know what the particular beliefs are of the person receiving the card, especially if it is to a business or colleague. But the United States is far from losing Christmas as part of its cultural or religious tradition. It is funny how Europeans can manage to move from calling the U.S. a nation of religious fanatics to a nation of entirely secular people. If we sent cards that said "Merry Christmas", you would be accusing us now of religious intolerance. Why is it our problem? Why is it American "political correctness" and not European ethnocentrism?

Well, here you go. Here is an American merrry Christmas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g4lY8Y3eoo&feature=related

"Happy Holidays" is offensive to people who have to work during the period. "Happy New Year" is offensive to people who live by the Gregorian calendar, or the Chinese system.

Armada: "If there is nothing to celebrate for the Jews, Muslims or other strange people then they should work instead of taking holidays."

Other strange people? ROFL I thought we Americans were supposed to be the intolerant ones? I'm coming to the conclusion that Americans are, indeed, far more tolerant we are given credit for.

Damian, to go off on a slight tangent: English author Colin Wilson has asserted in print that we Americans are more tolerant toward immigrants than any other country in the world. He contends that, historically, European countries have been resistant to immigration, out of the fear that the natives will be overwhelmed.....

What do you think about this?

Jasper - I understand what you are saying and I believe you are right - after all, America is a nation built un immigration is it not?

I also think it's safe to say that the UK is a very tolerant nation as well in this respect - historically this country has always been a refuge and a haven for those fleeing all kinds of persecution and discrimination over on the Continent, from the Protestant Huguenots escaping religious condemnation and execution in France to all those people deasperate to get away from the Nazi tyranny. By and large the UK still is a very tolerant country, but it has to be said that the increasing flow of potential "refugees" seeking "asylum from danger and life threatening situations" in other parts of the world has begun to test this tolerance to quite a degree lately, especially when the British people are told that the 5% to 10% increase in the UK's population between now and 2050 will be largely due to immigration into an island which is already quite heavily populated and in which it would be difficult to maintain the fabric of social welfare at present levels of supply, to mention just one thing, and all the other resources which contribute to the efficient running of a western democracy....many people, quite rightly, think that a line has to be drawn somewhere and that nothing in life is really infinite, so the limits of British tolerance can indeed be stretched a wee bit too far, to say the least.

Even so, I believe that the UK is one of the more tolerant of European countries all said and done, and it can come as a surprise to learn, and even observe at first hand, quite obvious instances of discrimination and hostility directed at certain groups of people within some of the Continental countries. We can even see signs of it on an official level, such as the banning of the burka in France and the ruling that all pupils in French schools must wear a western style of dress.

In Germany there is often quite overt hostility directed towards the Turks, for example, as well as other racial groups, on a level noticeably higher than that occurring in the UK. Right wing extremist groups on the Continent are a lot more in evidence there than they are here in the UK, in spite of the prominence given to the very right wing, and obviously racist, British National Party who, if they had their way, would happily ship out of this country anybody, absolutly anybody, who isn't indigenously White British.

I'm sorry, but I still don't get it with the American "Happy Holidays" thing. Why, oh why, did that American correspondent on our BBC radio program make a point of not naming the Christian festival of Christmas...yes, CHRISTMAS....but at the same time didn't hesitate to use the word Hanukkah in his seasonal greeting to the British listeners? Why is it fine to name every other religious group's festivals but not those celebrated in the Christian faith? Why is it acceptable in America to cause possible offence, by omission, to Christians but not to members of other religious faiths?

Just wondering in my quaint little British way..... ;-)

You would never hear a British person say "Happy Holidays" ....ever...never in a month of Sundays!

Happy Holidays is normal since in US English Holidays never mean Vacations but only Holy Days ;)
It's logical Holidays = Holy Days.

Summer Holidays make no sense since there are no Holy Days in the summertime (with the exception of Christmas in Australia and NZ).

Perhaps, Damian the gentleman you heard on the radio was Jewish himself. Remember that our East Coast in particular has a huge Jewish population. It may have been as strange for him to directly mention Christmas as it would be for you to mention Hanukkah only.

'Happy Holidays' is mostly used in formal situations where we are unaware of the faith of the other person. It's particularly used by buisnesses, which explains your company's christmas card. By and large, it has not overtaken 'Merry Christmas', nor do you see more stars of David than giant, blow-up nativity scenes on people's roofs. Simply put, the pc movement can try as it wants, but they're not going to be able to hush the Christian holiday for sometime to come.

"Perhaps, Damian the gentleman you heard on the radio was Jewish himself. "

Damian, I was just about to suggest the same thing...

Here's another point to ponder: sometimes when Americans say "Happy Holidays", they're referring to both Christmas and New Years Day, because of the close proximity of the two holidays.

<<You would never hear a British person say "Happy Holidays" ....ever...never in a month of Sundays! >>


Yes you would, because I say it, and I'm British.

You say because you are a smelly Jew.

<historically this country has always been a refuge and a haven...to all those people deasperate to get away from the Nazi tyranny>

For someone who prides himself on his PhD, Damian, you seem to know strangely little about the UK's refusal to accept all refugees from Nazi Europe during the Second World War.

Wintereis asks:

<Damian: Why is it that you always seem to want to judge an entire nation on one particular incident?>

And an entire sex by one female in Italy.

<<But if we are talking "correct" here don't all other English speakers have to defer to the English themselves? Hell, if I wanted to learn correct Navajo I would defer to the Navajos!>>

Yeah, only a handful of people speak Navajo, and they all pretty much live in one area. Easy to just have one main dialect. But for languages that have gone global for hundreds of years, there are multiple standards. Americans do not look to British norms or vice versa. Spanish is another good example. Not sure Mexicans or Argentinians care too much about how Spanish is spoken in Spain. After all, it really doesn't matter where a language was "invented" back in the mists of time; all speakers alive today are contemporaries, with equal claim on the tongue no matter where they are.

Nor can European speakers of Spanish or English lay claim to a "purer" form of the language than others, as those dialects have undergone random shifts and changes over the years that have carried them away from whatever the original precolonial speech was like. In fact, it is often the colonial dialects that preserve more original features by virtue of their isolation.

***Damian, you seem to know strangely little about the UK's refusal to accept all refugees from Nazi Europe during the Second World War***

Obviously it was impossible for Great Britain to offer a safe haven to ALL refugees from Nazi occupied Europe during WW2 for various reasons but I can assure you that those people who managed to cross the Channel or the North Sea prior to the complete occupation of countries like the Netherlands, Belgium and France in 1940 were indeed accepted as refugees in this country, and later on in the war the same welcome applied to those who managed to get to places like Lisbon, in Portugal which, like Spain, remained free of the Nazi jackboot. Lisbon, in particular, featured very prominently as a taking off point from a "free" Europe to those seeking refuge either in Britain or to, even more riskily at that time bearing in mind the very long journey involved across a U-boat infested Atlantic ocean and a Luftwaffe laden sky - the United States.

The British film actor Leslie Howard was on a flight from Lisbon to London when his plane was shot down by the Germans who thought the plane was carrying Winston Churchill (misplaced espionage there) and the American band leader Glenn Miller was "presumed" to have been shot down by the Nazis over the English Channel on a flight from fog shrouded England to a newly liberated Paris in December 1944.

In May 1940 Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was one of the most illustrious of such refugees welcomed to the safety of England just before those Jackboot Jerries stormed into her country.

During the whole of WW2 very many enemy aliens (mostly Germans) right across the UK were rounded up as soon as the war was declared in September 1939 and most of them held in secure camps in the Isle of Man, which was chosen because it was a small island in the middle of the Irish Sea, thius making escape very difficult, if not impossible. As the war Germans who found themselves captured on British soil (and also Italians who were captured by British forces) were held in prisoner of war camps (and became known as POW's to the British public) and there were POW camps in most areas of Britain - very few towns did not have one in their locality. One of the most famous "prisoners" captured on British soil (in Scotland as it happened) was Rudolf Hess, who took it upon himself to fly to Scotland in 1941 and landed on the estate of the Duke of Hamilton, on the pretext of "seeking a peace deal with the British". The deal he achieved was instant imprisonment in a Scottish jail and the rest is history...eventually dying a very old man in a Berlin prison....Spandau.... many years after WW2 ended.

When WW2 finally ended a surprising number of those former German and Italian POWs in Britain decided to remain here and rehabilitate thewmselves among their former enemy - the British, and most of them married British women.

Just one example here - in Ledbury, Herefordshire, England - where my grandparents live - two of those Italians who had been incarcerated in the POW camp on the outskirts of Ledbury (now the site of the John Masefield High School) married local girls and became very prominent citizens in the town and worked very hard for the benefit of the community down there, one of them becoming a high profile, very active and energetic local councillor and he is still alive and a firm supporter of Britain's membership of the European Union in a Europe which will never, ever again be the scene of the horrors and enmity of the past.

That really does illustrate the sheer futility and insanity of war, does it not?
Long live the free EU. Vive l'Europe libre!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/churchill_holocaust_01.shtml

In some parts of USA there are even alligators, sharks and other hazardous animal species.