Who are people who find Christmas offensive

[Blopi]

It really boils my piss when organisations curtail Christmas stuff as it may offend people.

Who are these people who find Christmas offensive? In my life I have worked and met people from various religions, cultures and countries. NOT one found Christmas and things that go with it. I didn’t work with Jehovah Witnesses but they don’t get offended. Most said they decorated their homes, wore Xmas jumpers and ate food which was suitable or tailored to their religion. Those who didn’t decorate their homes love seeing trees lit up.

I lived in a mainly Muslim area for 10 years. Every year without fail my next door Muslim neighbour would bring me round chocolates and biscuits for Christmas.

On the Stoke on Trent City Council website there are frequent mentions about Christmas and not one (that I could find) about Winterfest.

If you were bothered to look at the full picture, all the trees are in a large cardboard crate, labelled 'Christmas trees', they have option including 'evergreen' but also one with built in LED lights, an alpine snow version.

The cake is a fruit cake, the box it is in has Christmas trees and there is holly on the cake. Again it is one of a variety of cakes.

This is a total myth designed to titillate the tabloids. There are stories about Christmas being “banned” in the papers every year and invariably they turn out to be a massive overstatement of what’s happened.

I have worked with numerous Muslim and Jewish people over the years in different organisations and none of them has ever been “offended” by Christmas.

It’s,as far as I am aware, not about anyone finding Christmas offensive, but about making one lot of celebrations to include all midwinter-adjacent celebrations.

Oh my god, someone here fell for the Tesco trees story 😂. Disappointed but not surprised.

Wow - this is the most obvious example of faux-outraged shit-stirring. Nobody is offended. Hilarious that you couldn't dig up a more recent example than some local nonsense in Stoke on Trent from 2014

This is a lovely uniting topic. Both sides get to overstate their claim and feel very smug about how right their are.

”You can’t say Christmas these days”, clearly false.

”This literally never happens”, also clearly false.

I can give an example.
Birmingham City Council.
The Christmas Market in the city ( rubbish though it is) is now officially called the Winter Market.
The Christmas lights in the town flash “ Happy Holidays”
iThere must be some very offended councillors.

I mean, christans actually renamed a midwinter festival, and so I feel people can call it what they like, and celebrate how they like. I hope you can celebrate in ways that are meaningful to you, and let others do the same. Nobody owns christmas.

And yet they are holding 'Christmas' concerts there

I think that's a good way of putting it - its subtle but its there. And actually I think its overwhelming generated by 'white British' secular Guardian readers, many of whom enjoy a little bit of 'owning the Christians' if they're honest about it.

As a Christian I draw a clear distinction in my mind between Christmas the Christian festival and Christmas the food'n'tat fest. I celebrate both quite happily, but I think for most Brits of all beliefs Christmas is just the latter and isn't offensive to anyone

It is a winter market is it not?
Do we not want people to enjoy the holidays, if they have some?

That’s just it becoming Americanised though

Banning the word Christmas literally never happened

Because it’s not running solely for Christmas?

In our school (to be fair, it has been a few years) 65-70% of the student body speaks a foreign language as their native language. Obviously there are Christians in the mix as well but majority are muslim. The ones that complain are the "non-foreigner" local atheists. Same on out scoutd Christmas party. The Muslim and Hindus are the most active in Christmas Carol singing.

My guess a lot of times when places make the 'don't want to offend' decisions haven't actually spoken to anyone. I've noticed in my hobbies that the concern doesn't usually come from the target group. Meaning whenever we talk about fees. The ones most concerned about affordability for others and need everything to be practically free are the ones who can afford it, the ones who have less (unemployed, students) etc. Have never complained and alway pay in time.

I work at a boarding school with kids from all over. We do Christmas outings, lunch etc and they all love it. The only thing that they don't do is the church service if they aren't Christians. So no offence taken by other cultures. It's a daily mail/reform thing to make us resent immigrants.

Exactly. I've never yet on any of these threads which appear yearly like clockwork seen an example banning Christmas.

Aah, you must mean a different Tesco. The web page of the one I use has a whole section under the heading 'Christmas' with links to...
Christmas food
Christmas clothes
Christmas gifts
Christmas treats
Christmas decorations
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/shop/christmas/all?gl=1i413beupMQ..gaMTA4NDI3NDg3Ni4xNzYzNzk4NTQzga33B19D36CYczE3NjM3OTg1NDIkbzEkZzEkdDE3NjM3OTg2MDYkajYwJGwwJGgyMDQ0NzMyOTQw

You can even see the word Christmas in the web link

I would agree with this actually. It is a 'Winter festival' for most people because most British people are atheist. They won't be doing any 'Christian' things at Christmas. They will be putting up a Pagan tree, buying loads of stuff they probably don't need, drinking and partying. If these Reform types really wanted to defend the British way of life they would be embracing Winterval. Most people in church on Christmas day will be immigrants or descended from immigrants.

Agreed.
Most non-extreme religious groups, or secular folks for that matter, don't have a problem with people marking religious events in a way that's acceptable to them.
The issue is when one festival is marked as more important and people start to lay claim to having 'the only true faith', when there is no such thing.

Why is it called a "Christmas Market" instead of "Winter Market" on all advertising, then?

https://thebfcm.co.uk/

In my experience it's not Muslims or any other religion taking offence at Xmas. It's usually the liberal lefties who take it on themselves to he offended on behalf of others. Just carry on carrying on and celebrate Xmas how you see fit. I will only get pissed off if someone directly tells me what I should and shouldn't say around xmas. Otherwise business as usual for me....

I mean it's a market in winter so...

Not everything that happens in November and December has to be called "Christmas"