Happy Holidays

I was hoping to make it to Thanksgiving without having to issue another

CRITICAL PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM YOUR AUNT SLUGGER

but it appears that we won't be able to make it that long.

Today, in the baking aisle at Stop & Shop, while I was trying my hardest to find regular gingerbread cake mix instead of that bullshit whole wheat variety, I overheard a man telling a friend that he is going to use the phrase "Merry Christmas" and not this "politically correct 'happy holidays' shit."

That's the spirit.

Now, your Aunt Slugger is not known for being the most sensitive person to grace this mortal coil, but I actually use the phrase "Happy Holidays" in situations where I do not know what a person celebrates. You want to know why? Gather 'round, kids, because Aunt Slugger is going to tell you a story.

The Slugger family is not a religious family, but we are a materialistic family, so we go hard at Christmas. I grew up in a Bible-intensive part of the country, so everyone I knew was also heavy into Christmas.

At age 17, your Aunt Slugger headed to college in a suburb of Boston. Your Aunt Slugger experienced extreme culture shock that year, because the school was 60% Jewish. Even though my paternal grandfather was Jewish, and my father was raised Jewish, the closest I came to experiencing Judaism growing up in my house was sprinkling kosher salt on an Easter ham.

As it turned out, attending a school with so many Jewish students had significant benefits to a non-religious person like myself, including days off for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shmini Atzeret, and Passover. (Hannukah, it happens, is not considered a major holiday in the Jewish faith, and the very religious Jews don't give large gifts for Hannukah. You're supposed to give practical gifts, like an umbrella or a protractor. It sounds like a terrible holiday. "Go big or go home" is my motto.)

At this school, non-Jews were in the minority. Not being an especially sensitive person, I didn't really care if someone assumed I was Jewish or assumed I was celebrating a Jewish holiday. Because, well, if you really think about it, we should all just be grateful when a stranger is wishing us well instead of trying to gun us down with an automatic weapon. But the same people who piss and moan about the trend toward saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" would probably launch a hand grenade at the first person to wish them a Happy Yom Kippur. (Not that there's anything happy about that morbid fucking holiday.)

So keep that in mind: If you wouldn't want someone to wish you a Happy Sukkot because you are not part of a religion that builds a temporary outdoor hut and eats all your meals in it for a week*, then don't assume people want you to wish them a Merry Christmas. It's that simple.




*This holiday usually falls in mid-October. Your Aunt Slugger tried to reconnect with her latent Judaism by eating in this hut a few times during college. Fuck my latent Judaism; the hut was cold.

Facebook Status Updates

CRITICAL PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM AUNT SLUGGER

I know it's been a while since your Aunt Slugger has posted, and I owe you all an apology for that, but there are more pressing matters at hand. I saw something today that I just couldn't let go.

Today on Facebook, multiple people posted the following status update, word for word:

"If you voted for Obama to prove your not a racist, this time you better vote for someone else to prove your not an idiot!"

I will pause for a moment while you re-read that. Take your time.

Are you done? All right. People, please read this public service announcement VERY, VERY CAREFULLY.

If you are going to call someone an idiot in a Facebook status update, you should be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT YOU PROOFREAD BEFORE YOU CLICK "POST." Do you get what I'm saying? Because calling someone an idiot while SIMULTANEOUSLY MISSPELLING WORDS is both ironic and tragic. (It's also funny, but not for you. Just for the rest of us.)

And as a side note, did anyone vote for Obama to prove he or she was not a racist? The implication here is that Obama received an absolute boatload of votes from people who were standing alone in a voting booth, overcome with concern about what the voting machine thought about their level of racial tolerance. Is that why he won? Not because he ran a better campaign or because voters liked his platform better? But because American voters, the same American voters who have sustained "The Jersey Shore" through four seasons, were suddenly consumed with appearances? Yes, that explains it.

So please, readers, the next time you call someone an idiot, check you're spelling.