I always thought it was because that was the day you "boxed up" all the Christmas decorations, but most people seem to leave their stuff up until February most of the time.
The origin lies in the servants of nobles during the Victorian era. Since they had to work and serve on Christmas Day, they were given the day after off to celebrate with their own families. They were given a box from their employer to share with their family.
It wasn't originally, and if it is now then it isn't really any more inclusive than "Merry Christmas" - not everybody has a holiday around then either.
TWM03 well it is more inclusive than Merry Christmas because Merry Christmas applies only to Christians, whereas Happy Holidays applies to everybody with a holiday around this time- and most people at least have holiday from work or school if not a religious holiday. It is not totally inclusive, no, but to say it "isn't really any more" inclusive is just ridiculous
Yes, Thanksgiving is always on the 4th Thursday of November. Why? There is some suspected history (see [http://www.equiculture.org/why-is-thanksgiving-on-thursday-.aspx], for example), but most of the reasoning you'll find is speculative at best. The most accurate reason is: because Congress said so.
Technically not true. Only American Thanksgiving is celebrated on the 4th Thursday of November. Canadian Thanksgiving is the 2nd Monday of October (it came first BTW).
The first evidence of Thanksgiving in Canada was In 1578, when a group of Artic explorers ran into freak storm and bad snow. They escaped relatively unscathed, and gave thanks for the strange fortunes that came to them in their survival. The next evidence was 1604, when French settlers following Samuel de Champlain, gave thanks with a huge feast after crossing the ocean.
Argh, I THOUGHT of Boxing Day but I thought it was in November for some reason! And Pere Noel... I couldn't remember the second part... I kept on saying Pere Christmas... Lol
There is actually a song about that. Christmas Can-Can. Heard this same song twenty times and it's only Halloween. It's not even cold outside. Christmas season, starting sooner every year. It's October, stores have plastic Christmas trees... etc. It's pretty darn funny. Sincerely recommend a listen.
Though the all-consuming Christmas season continues to resorb more and more of the end of the calendar year... "Black Friday" has long been and I think still is considered the start of the Christmas *shopping* season, if not the season in general. It's when the sales start. It's when retailers can count of having their ledgers be "in the black" as many US retail chains make most of their profits this time of year.
Anyway, though the hint mentions Thanksgiving, the answer- Black Friday- is definitely about Christmas.
Christmas is the Borg of holidays. It grows larger and larger, consuming and assimilating all adjacent holidays until the entire year is one long onslaught of holiday music and consumerism. Resistance is Futile.
Nobody is attacking the meaning of Christmas, either. Didn't you see Kirk Cameron's magnum opus Saving Christmas? It won a lot of awards. Razzies mostly. In it he explains how pagan polytheist traditions, shmaltzy holiday kitsch, and rampant crass consumerism are all really about Jesus.
More seriously, I've been hearing about people forgetting Christmas was about Christ since I was 5. That was 32 years ago. Nobody has forgotten yet.
In a way it's like the anti-Borg - as the Borg assimilate more individuals the knowledge and experience that the hive mind shares grows greater and greater. Christmas, like you say, just turns a larger and larger portion of each passing year into a mass of dumbed-down homogeneity, so much so that for about 2 months of the year now there will be absolutely no good music on in my mum's house - just the same 20 god-awful 'Christmas' songs on a loop - and all of the shops on the high street hang the same tacky lumps of garish plastic in their windows.
I wish Christmas would go back to being 2 days, then it was special.
I think I said this before. Maybe the comments were deleted. But there is nothing politically correct about saying "Happy Holidays" - a greeting that was perfectly accepted by Christians up until the invented "War on Christmas" came along and convinced people that this was somehow anti-Christmas. The question belongs as much on an April Fool's Quiz as the X-Mas question on this quiz
That is completely correct. A couple of years ago I went to a museum to see an exhibition of '50s & '60s Christmas cards, & lo & behold, at least half of them said either Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings. Those decades were long before the (completely phony) "War on Christmas." Greeting someone w/a kind word or three ought to be about making the other person feel good, not about metaphorically patting oneself on the back about how pious oneself is.
Thank you, Kalbahamut. I also grew up with Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays on cards and in store windows and we never thought anyone was using them to negate the "reason for the season". (Doesn't the word holiday come from holy day, anyway?) I prefer using those types of greetings in order to include people who celebrate other holidays during the same time, and it really irks me that some people have decided that means I'm un-Christian.
"Happy Holidays" has come to be a term that is meant to be inclusive (oh, the horror! Inclusiveness!!)... buuut... originally it WAS just intended as a shorter was of saying "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year." Later on people came to think that it also meant Happy Hannukah. And then eventually Kwanzaa got thrown in. I think it was around that time that people started getting angry. But these greetings have been in use, by Christians and non-Christians alike, for decades (Merry Xmas dates back to the 16th century!), without offending anyone.
That's only the politically correct version in the States. In other areas of the world "Happy Festive Season" is politically correct, and should also be accepted. I am sure there are loads of other "politically Correct" sayings all over the world.
I think Rammstein is more festive and Christmas-y than Mannheim Steamroller. They have that song about angels. And another about a piano. A bunch about sodomy.
Technically these days to be PC you must get affirmative consent before wishing someone happy holidays. And if you are a man, "white," able-bodied, "cis"gendered, etc, it would also be wise to apologize profusely for your privilege before addressing a woman or person of color, or, really, anybody. Better to just keep your mouth shut. Who are you to oppress these people by insisting that they have a good day? What's next? Are you going to tell them to smile? Or compliment some part of their appearance? ugh! And "seasons greetings!?" Oh my god. Why are you greeting strange people you don't know. That's sexual harassment, obviously. You might as well be raping them.
Kalbahamut: I seldom agree with you, but you have definitely hit the nail on the head in your 12/11/2016 comment. (Wow! it took me exactly one year to find it!) This overabundance of being politically correct is not only smothering all creativity but, if continued unabated, will soon reduce us to automatons.
Transgender and cisgender are adjectives, not verbs. Cis is also an established and widely used prefix to mean "the same", or more specifically "on the same side". You would most likely recognise the prefixes cis and trans from the terms cisfats and transfats, where cisfats have the h atoms on the same side of the molecule and the transfats have them on opposite sides. Therefore cisgender means same gender i.e. your real gender is the same as the gender assigned to at birth
It's not a slur or randomly created term so no need for those " "
First, these kooks use "gender" as a verb all the time. Maybe you missed the last meeting.
2nd, of course this ridiculous term was invented with a political agenda in mind. It can and has been used regularly as a pejorative, by those who also use "white", "male", and "privileged" as pejoratives (and there are many out there, I've had these insults hurled at me many times). But the original purpose was not so much to put down normal people but rather to take away and deny their normal status. Because while it should make perfect sense to refer to those who were born biologically male as simply "male" and those who were born biologically female as simply "female," if you exclusively attach prefixes to transsexuals then this is acknowledging that there is something unusual or different about their gender identity, and we can't have that, so they want to force unnecessary prefixes on everyone. At the same time calling people "cis-male" or "cis-female" pushes the narrative that ...
... gender is fluid or a social construct and that there is some need to identify if someone is the same gender they were born as. This is sort of like calling someone a human-person, or Siamese-Thai. It's redundant, unnecessary, and politically charged.
The way quotes work in this context is that you are quoting someone else- using someone else's words that are not your own words. These are not my own words. In some cases you may borrow someone else's words that you might also use yourself, but you want to use a proper attribution. But not in this case. I would never in my life refer to someone as "cis"gender un-ironically. I also don't recognize race as a real thing, so "white" is similarly appropriate. It's shorthand for saying something like "so-called white people" to acknowledge that while the label is invalid or just not something I would use myself, nevertheless there are people who use that label. My use of quotes was completely justified.
Can someone please explain the 'Santa's belly jiggles like..' question? The poem says 'and a little round belly That shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly' - doesn't it? '
There weren't three wise men! An unknown number of "Magi from the east" (Matthew 2:1) brought gifts made of three materials (Matthew 2:11), thus everyone assumes there were three gifts; one wise man per gift. Also, "Happy Holidays" isn't the politically correct way to say Merry Christmas; it's the inclusive way to wish people happiness during whatever holiday they celebrate. "Merry Christmas" is the politically correct way to say Merry Christmas.
Isn't jello a brand of American pudding? I had american neighbours and they always used to make "jello pies" with us, and that was like a chocolate cream sort of thing. Jelly is, well, jelly. It wobbles
we have black Friday in UK as well now
is the christmas toy thing in America coz I remember in 1996 the stores being totally sold out of buzz lightyears as it was the ust have toy in UK
I see you accept Gluhwein, but maybe accept it with some kinder spellings for people in the odd situation I am that they know of it as Gluhwein and not mulled wine, but can't spell German words (maybe something along the lines of gluewine or gluevine as that's how it is pronounced)
I didn't realise thanksgiving was related to christmas- I always thought it was in november and was to do with american settlers. As a brit thanksgiving is a bit of a mystery to me, I genuinely had no idea it was anything to do with christmas!
Also a Brit and also not sure but I think it's something to do with native Americans sharing their food with the pilgrims who had a shortage. I don't think it is related to Christmas per se but rather as it is a holiday and it's in the run-up to Christmas I think the stores started trying to cash in by offering big discounts at a time when people had time get to the shops.
I could be totally wrong about all of that. I suppose we could ask Google couldn't we?!
I explained this above. The question isn't about Thanksgiving, it's about Black Friday, which is the Friday after Thanksgiving and in the US traditionally marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.
Anyway, though the hint mentions Thanksgiving, the answer- Black Friday- is definitely about Christmas.
and, oh yeah, Christmas is under attack. Right...
More seriously, I've been hearing about people forgetting Christmas was about Christ since I was 5. That was 32 years ago. Nobody has forgotten yet.
I wish Christmas would go back to being 2 days, then it was special.
And I really wish I was Borg *sigh*
2nd, of course this ridiculous term was invented with a political agenda in mind. It can and has been used regularly as a pejorative, by those who also use "white", "male", and "privileged" as pejoratives (and there are many out there, I've had these insults hurled at me many times). But the original purpose was not so much to put down normal people but rather to take away and deny their normal status. Because while it should make perfect sense to refer to those who were born biologically male as simply "male" and those who were born biologically female as simply "female," if you exclusively attach prefixes to transsexuals then this is acknowledging that there is something unusual or different about their gender identity, and we can't have that, so they want to force unnecessary prefixes on everyone. At the same time calling people "cis-male" or "cis-female" pushes the narrative that ...
The way quotes work in this context is that you are quoting someone else- using someone else's words that are not your own words. These are not my own words. In some cases you may borrow someone else's words that you might also use yourself, but you want to use a proper attribution. But not in this case. I would never in my life refer to someone as "cis"gender un-ironically. I also don't recognize race as a real thing, so "white" is similarly appropriate. It's shorthand for saying something like "so-called white people" to acknowledge that while the label is invalid or just not something I would use myself, nevertheless there are people who use that label. My use of quotes was completely justified.
I could be totally wrong about all of that. I suppose we could ask Google couldn't we?!