I’m taking the week off from blogging. If you’re not, consider this an open thread. Merry Christmas to all, and God bless us, every one. Well, almost everyone.

Last year many retailers learned the hard way that censoring Christmas was a dumb idea. Best Buy, it seems, is not among them. When contacted by Snopes, they replied:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about including Christmas in our marketing efforts. We recognize that several holidays are celebrated during the months of November and December. Many people exchange gifts in celebration of one or more of these holidays.

In order to be respectful of all our customers (and employees) who celebrate different holidays throughout the season, we are choosing to use “Happy Holidays” as the primary greeting in our holiday campaign.

I say we take Best Buy at their word. Since they think generic holidays are more respectful than actual holidays with any real character, let’s do all our generic holiday shopping at Best Buy, and our Christmas shopping elsewhere.

UPDATE: More venom from … who else?

Even electricity, no doubt in concert with the ACLU, is trying to stomp out Christmas. Here’s a report of a burned-down Christmas Tree at a moderately known California attraction:

The fire at Disney’s Grand California Hotel in the 1600 block of South Disneyland Drive was reported at about 3 a.m., according to Anaheim Fire Department spokeswoman Maria Sabol.

She called the fire “electrical in nature,” saying it started after employees changed some lightbulbs on the tree and turned the lights back on.

The blaze was contained by the emergency sprinkler system in the lobby, Sabol said, and 18 firefighters were able to put it out quickly when they arrived.

Clearly, sprinkler water is on John Gibson’s side of the fight over Christmas. But the real question is, did the hotel’s guests enjoy the sound emitted by the fire alarms?

Guests said the alarm was deafening.

“The noise was from hell,” said guest Lee Krize. “And we all get up. I look at the people out the window, and I can see flames in the lobby. We all get dressed, trying to get a head count because there are 11 of us all together, including a 3-month-old baby.”

“You know how it is: You’re sleeping and you hear that beeping,” said guest Joseph LaFrance. “It kind of wakes you up. But you get through it. And it’s better to save lives than to be stuck in a building like this.”

Better to wake up and leave the building than to stay in bed and die. I hear ya, man.

Bill Quick @ Daily Pundit notes that some librarian in North Carolina pins 13 million as the number of people who celebrate Kwanzicaa every year.

Bill wonders where that number came from; I also wonder.

There’ll probably be light posting today and tomorrow on account of my planning on getting drunk.

Tonight, as I’m sipping rumnog and violently shaking the unopened boxes stationed under the Christmas Tree, wondering what exactly is rattling inside of them, I’ll be thinking about our good friend Xrlq and his happy clan. Hopefully they have arrived safely in the Bahamas, where tomorrow’s high is 82 degrees. (Of course the high here in Los Angeles will be 83 degrees, but I digress.)

And now, as my Christmas present to Xrlq’s readers, I have prepared a lesson in some multiculti diversimication for all you “Merry Christmas” wishing, closed-minded, Lord worshipers in a little blogpost I like to call,

• Kwanzaa, sometimes referred to as Kwanzicaa or “the week between Christmas and New Years”, is an ancient celebration dating back to the old times — around 1966, when one Dr. Maulana Karenga came up with it.
• Dr. Maulana Karenga, also known by his birthname, “Ron”, is a convicted felon and avowed communist. (Unfortunately he is also a graduate of the University of Southern California.) YOUR God may be GOD; Karenga’s god is Karl Marx (who, like Jesus, is white.).
• Kwanzicaa is only for displaced Africans, the white man need not apply.
• Kwanzicaa coincidentally begins the day after Christmas, and coincidentally ends on New Years day.
• An important Kwanzicaa symbol is a candle-holder, which is called a Kinara. This instrument is totally different than the Jews’ Menorah, which is also coincidentally a candle-holder. **
• Kwanzicaa’s official colors are red, green, and black, which only appear similar to Christmas’ colors, which are red and green.
• Kwanzicaa celebrations require that an ear of corn be procured for each child in the family. But, do not — NOT! — place said ears of corn in a cornucopia, because cornucopias are for whitey. Instead they should be placed on a straw mat, preferably bearing an African print of some sort. Also, if your household does not have any children, you should get an ear of corn anyway, because corn tastes really good.

For more information about Kwanzicaa, visit your local library! (or go here)

** FYI: The Menorah holds nine candles. (Thanks Steve!)

Los Angeles’ Christmas Tree is only 25 feet tall, compared with San Francisco’s, which is 100 feet, and Fashion Island’s (in Newport Beach), which is 115 feet.

But, at least LA has a tree. In an effort to abide by a new non-discriminatory (my word) anti-fire code in Providence, R.I., workers destroyed their tree:

That city’s 18-foot Colorado Blue Spruce lost its needles and died after Statehouse workers dried it with commercial fans and sprayed it with a fire-retardant chemical. The workers were following a stringent new fire code enacted after a deadly 2003 nightclub blaze

I hope someone in Providence is punched by a fist of commonsense and realizes that the fire code should probably discriminate between two entirely different scenarios: a nightclub packed full of people in which illegal pyrotechnics are being used, and a Christmas Tree standing in front of the Statehouse.

If you contributed to Venomous Kate’s Fang Fund, your investment paid off, big time. Go wish her well.

The normally reasonable (if not Reason^TMable) Virginia Postrel defends the politically correct phrase “Happy Holidays” on the grounds that:

I hope to have a happy, though not necessarily merry, December 25. But I wish good-hearted folks like Lileks would consider that Christmas greetings don’t make everyone feel good.

Oh, please. First of all, the word “merry” does not have any religious connotations whatsoever, so anyone who objects to that word is two fries short of a Happy Meal(R). If someone wished me a “merry birthday” or a “merry New Year,” I might look at him a bit odd, as that’s not the usual terminology, but it wouldn’t even occur to me to get offended by it. For another, Christmas is Christmas. If someone wishes you a merry one, and that doesn’t make you feel good, the problem lies with you, not with him. I’ve never had a Jew wish me a happy Hannukah, but you know what? I’d be flattered if one did. I’m not a Jew myself, but I’ve worked with more than a few of them at varying stages of my career. Most of them largely kept their religion to themselves, but one said “Mazel Tov” to my wedding and another said a Jewish blessing when I announced the expected birth of my son. It didn’t occur to me to take offense either time. I took both for what they were: an attempt by a sincere Jew to be nice to me in his own way. I appreciated that. I didn’t go paranoid and interpret it as a backhanded effort to convert me, which it almost certainly was not.

In that vein, I hereby call scroogity on Virginia Postrel. So what if she’s not Christian? As a devout agnostic, neither am I, nor was one of my past Jewish bosses who scratched his head over the fact that a Christian colleague declined to attend the company’s Christmas party on religious grounds. As to that colleague’s reason for not attending, so what if the Bible itself doesn’t say when Jesus’s birthday is? Whether I remain an agnostic for the rest of my life or convert to any other of the world’s major religions, I hereby promise that I do not now, nor will I ever, take offense at being wished a Merry Christmas by anybody. The only conditions of this promise are as follows: (1) it must actually be Christmas, or shortly before it (i.e., wishing me a Merry Christmas on the Fourth of July won’t work) and (2) the wish must be sincere, i.e., you must really mean “Merry Christmas,” and not “get your ass back in church, you heathen.” To everyone else I say, if having someone wish you a “Merry Christmas” does not make you feel good, get help. The problem is with you, not with them.

UPDATE: In a follow-up entry, Postrel acknowledges that most of the email she’s received defending “Merry Christmas” has come from people who “are not in fact Christians but secularists determined to define Christmas as an occasion that has nothing to do with religious faith.” The heading of her post aptly reads “Gee, Maybe I Was Full of Crap Another Reason for ‘Happy Holidays.’” Another reason?! OK, I guess. According to VPostrel, we should now stop wishing each other a Merry Christmas for two reasons: (1) because it is a religious holiday that only Christians can appreciate, and (2) because it is a secular holiday only non-Christians can appreciate.

Given Virginia’s “heads I win, tails you lose” style of argument, it is clear that no one is going to “win” this argument with her between now and this Christmas. That’s OK, we’ve got a whole year to go before next Christmas Holiday. In the meantime, should you ever speak to Virginia Postrel, email her, or correspond with her shortly before any federal or state holiday, be sure to wish her a generic “Happy Holiday” rather than identifying the holiday in question by name. I’m sure she’ll understand.

UPDATE x2: Michelle Malkin, unsurprisingly, agrees.

Below is a transcript that was just leaked from the courthouse in Redwood City:

Mark Geragos: Scott! Relax! I’ve got some great news for you.

Scott Peterson: Did the bailiff just tip you off that they’re gonna let me go?

Geragos: No, silly. It’s too late for that. But trust me, the news is good.

Peterson: They’re going to recommend 20 to life?

Geragos: Nope, can’t do that, either. But c’mon, let’s celebrate!

Peterson: Life without parole? OK, I can deal with that.

Geragos: No, it’s [inaudible]

Judge, in background: Have you reached a uninimous verdict?

Peterson: What was that?

Foreman, in background: Yes, we have, Your Honor…

Peterson: So what is it?

Geragos: I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico.