We’re talking about the greeting, not Christmas in general. I don’t think it’s controversial that it’s considered rude now to wish a stranger Merry Christmas, but here’s a Huffington Post article that argues against it for just one example: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/happy-holidays-instead-of_1_b...

There are good reasons to know your audience before using the greeting, but it’s very rare to hear it at all in many parts of the US, which does seem strange when 90% of the country celebrates Christmas. Since Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Halloween are completely fine to say to a stranger I think it’s fair to say the greeting has been canceled, for better or worse, regardless of original intent.

> I don’t think it’s controversial that it’s considered rude now to wish a stranger Merry Christmas

Yes, its very controversial to claim that is the general view.

> here’s a Huffington Post article that argues against it

But…it doesn’t argue either against saying Merry Christmas or that it is “rude” to say it (or that anything is “rude”.) It argues that it is illegal (a form of workplace religious discrimination) for your boss to compel you to say it, outside of narrow circumstances where it may be a bona fide job requirement.

This confusion of arguments that being compelled by government, an employer, etc. to do X is improper and/or illegal with arguments that choosing on your own to do X is immoral, rude, etc. is sadly common.

I disagree, this is from the article:

“If you do celebrate Christmas, then please don’t forget that there are many other religious holidays being celebrated in December. Some of your customers and coworkers may not want to have Christmas shoved down their throats.”

It definitely might be clickbait but it was one of the first Google results. Clearly at least some people think the greeting is “shoving Christmas down their throats”

So, you've heard (from the right) that this is widespread opinion on the left, but when you looked at what the left says, you only found fairly minor voices expounding a somewhat weaker version of that claim? That sounds exactly like the 'weak man' thing we're discussing, doesn't it?

The parent didn’t claim or imply that this was the general view of the left; you’ve created a straw man argument here.

Yes they did, read the thread.

There are two views here, broadly, about canceling 'Merry Christmas':

a) it's a popular view on the left

b) it's not a popular view on the left, but some on the right have acted as if it is

View b) is equivalent to agreeing that this whole thing is an example of a 'weak man' argument, and a) is equivalent to disagreeing with it. I struggle to see how anyone could read camjohnson26's comments and conclude that they meant b). They cited a link as evidence of a) and complained when I suggested it wasn't persuasive.

I still don’t see where in the thread that anyone is suggesting that this is a “widespread” view. The parent notes that some people hold it, and we can imply that enough people hold it (and with enough collective influence) that businesses were coerced into changing their policies, but that doesn’t suggest any kind of majority or even a sizable minority. Indeed, the whole idea behind “tyranny of the minority” is that it takes only a very small minority to drive broad-reaching change in cases like these. I think one of us has misread the thread, but I’ve now triple checked and I don’t think the error is mine in this particular instance.

Then I beg you to read it a fourth time, because you've mixed up the two opposing 'weak man' claims:

1) The left saying: "Those silly righties are mad at Starbucks because they won't put Christmas decorations on their cups!"

2) The right saying: "Those silly lefties hate religion so much that they get mad if you tell them merry christmas!"

You started this thread by mentioning the first one. Someone replied to you that 'bring merry christmas back' was indeed a thing. Then camjohnson26 replied to them, saying "They wouldn’t feel like they need to bring Merry Christmas back if the overly politically correct voices hadn’t tried to cancel it in the first place."

Note that the first half of that (people trying to bring the greeting back) is a reference to weak man 1, and the second half (people trying to cancel the greeting) suggests that weak man 2) wasn't an exaggeration, it really happened. It is that latter half that I responded to.

Does the left think it enough to meet some arbitrary threshhold that allows us to call it 'widespread'? I dunno, that sounds totally subjective and semantic. Luckily that's not what we're arguing about (I just used that term as a short way of saying 'as widespread as the right has claimed'). What we are arguing about is: were the claims from the right about the left being against 'merry christmast' roughly accurate, or a big exaggeration? I claim the latter, and camjohnson26 (I'm fairly sure they would agree) was saying the former.

How many examples would I need to provide? Discounting this one as a minor voice is getting into “No True Scotsman” territory. And this was just the top Google result, definitely not the only result.

> How many examples would I need to provide?

I'm a liberal, living in a very liberal city. I don't need you to tell me what the left thinks. Believe me, I've heard plenty of politically correct stuff from my side that I think is silly (and presumably you would agree). This just isn't one. You can go to a collectivist bookstore with BLM posters in the window, where the History section is labeled "Herstory," and still be wished a Merry Christmas by the person running the register.

You're welcome to disagree of course but this might be a good time to step back and remember where the goalposts started. You didn't set out thinking this was something you would have to prove with evidence. You said, "I don't think it's controversial that..." and then a bunch of people said it was.

In any event, I don't think it's super important; this seems like it is clearly an example of a 'weak man', because however strongly the left does or doesn't think it's rude to say Merry Christmas, it seems incontrovertible to say that Fox News presented us as believing it somewhat more than we do, and for the reasons discussed in the article.

That quote is certainly an example of what you'd call "political correctness", but it's not an example of cancelling.

> I don’t think it’s controversial that it’s considered rude now to wish a stranger Merry Christmas...

Strongly disagree. Also, the first sentence of the article you link kind of contradicts you here. Please consider the possibility that this is one of those ginned-up-for-clicks things.