Are you offended by a Christmas tree if you don't celebrate Christmas?

I don’t understand because I’m not offended by menorrahs and I don’t celebrate Chanukah. I am not offended by wiccan symbols and I’m not a wiccan. To each his own.

What kind of business is it?

I am not offended, but I don’t understand why non Christian-based businesses would decorate with a Christmas theme.

In my opinion, it matters how the tree is decorated. If it’s all Jesus and Santa… then that can be alienating. A simple tree with lights and generic decorations can be very beautiful.

I repeat, I am not offended. I wouldn’t say anything. But if I feel slightly uncomfortable, I might not frequent the business, especially in November-December.

Some morons have cornered the market when it comes to being offended.
The whole lot of them need to have a vacuum cleaner shoved up their arseholes to suck out their heads.

Why should I be offended?

The “Christmas” tree is one of those symbols that was co-opted by European Christian culture. Over the centuries it evolved from the Yule Log of the Northern Germanic tribes.

A person who is offended by someone else’s tree is just a crank. People choose to get offended.

They need to put the tree back up immediately.

It’s just a tree. What’s so wrong with it?

It’s an urgent care center. It was decorated with bulbs and lights and tinsel only.

@chyna Then I can’t see why the tree itself would be offensive.

As a health care institution, however, they are responsible for providing care for all. Again, I don’t understand why they would choose to decorate with what has come to be recognized as a Christian/Christmas symbol.

As a non-Christian, I have experienced many self-righteous, judgmental Christians who feel it appropriate to tell me that I will burn in hell for not being Christian, who have said very inappropriate things to my children, etc. I think the “offence” that the patron felt was related to their experiences of feeling judged and excluded by the Christian majority. I could see where a Christian decorative symbol might make someone feel like that health care center welcomes and cares for Christians… potentially alienating non-Christians.

It’s an experience that you can’t relate to if you’re a part of the majority. It’s like telling a white person about white privilege.

@chyna then maybe they get offended because they think the tree is too cheerful for a care center setting? Come on! It’s still just a tree.

I am a huge agnostic that lives in one of the most liberal places in the country. I literally have no religious or Republican real life friends. Not on Facebook either…

I just moved a old 70 inch CRT tv to the curb on Saturday to make room for a Christmas tree. My sister, teacher of all things anti-jesus has a tree. Every godless liberal I know has a tree.

If I see Chinese New Year symbols around February, I don’t find it offensive. I don’t feel like the facility caters to Chinese. If I went someplace around Chanukah and they only had Jewish symbols, I wouldn’t be scared that they’re only catering to Jewish people. If I see a Christmas tree and a menorrah, I don’t get offended if I am wiccan. I agree people choose to be offended, and it seems nowadays people want to bitch about something.

Not offended by anything to do with Christmas. Tired of it at times but not offended.

I don’t understand why people can’t just have a Merry Christmas. Nobody takes down their Halloween decorations because of the strange history of that tradition. Why? Because what it is today isn’t what it was back then. Christmas is just Christmas. Just enjoy it.

If you’re one of those “take down the Christmas tree” people.. gtf away from me.

Let me expand a little on my answer, specifically to Christmas lights and gaudily decorated trees.

I’ve driven past many homes where the outdoor decorations, lights, creches are just plain ugly. Overly lit, terrible colors, just badly done.

When I see those, I am offended by the aesthetics – the ‘art’ or lack thereof. They just did a bad job.

So it’s not the christmas message that is bothering me, it’s the art and presentation. It’s not the religious message that is offensive; rather it is ugliness of the presentation.

I know that for some folks, that is too subtle of a difference.

The trees are pagan anyway. People are stupid. We need to fight against the stupid and not let them make the rest of us stupid.

The local branch of my bank got around that by keeping the tree up all year long, and redecorating it every month. In December it is festooned with Channukah, Christmas, Solstice, Kwanzaa, etc decorations. The same for every little or big event they can find per month, including seasonal stuff. Leaves in autumn, flip-flops and sunglasses in August, etc.

Anyone would have to dig pretty deep to be offended.

Personally, I just like all the sparkly pretty things, but then I never grew out of my 12-year-old-girl Hello Kitty phase.

^You still have your Hello Kitty underware?

I saw a Hello Kitty tree on FB yesterday.

I do actually like the lit up houses in such a dark season although there is a 10 foot high inflatable Santa in my neighborhood who seems to have erectile dysfunction.

Christmas is just a midwinter festival. I’m offended that Christians have taken it away from those whose festival it originally was!

Here in the Buckle of the Bible Belt we still play religious radio stations in public places. You can hear abortion, homosexuality and adultery condemned as you shop.

You’d have to be awfully thin skinned to be offended by a Christmas tree.

Christmas is no longer really a “Christian” thing. It’s a nice winter holiday that breaks the monotony of cold, short, dark winter days. Gets us over the hump, so to speak. The tree is the most innocuous of Christmas traditions. I have never really associated it with actual Christianity.

Somebody has been reading too much Facebook bullshit (the person who complained.)

Easter, on the other hand, is solidly Christian now, whatever it’s origins. It’s THE most Christian of holidays.

Again, I am offended by Christians taking over Easter as it was an ancient celebration of the spring equinox. In fact the date of Easter is not fixed, but instead is governed by the phases of the moon – how Christian is that?

It’s all bullshit, @Stinley. It’s just human nature to want to have ceremonies, and the more ancient ones usually revolve around agriculture.

Being offended by the Christians “taking over” some stupid ceremony is akin to the British being offended that “Merikins “took over” their language and fucked it all up.

@Dutchess_III ummm..no… the ‘merkins did not take the language over. Talking louder than everyone in the room does not constitute a take over. Simply a display of the most obnoxious.

It’s not just talking louder. I wasn’t even thinking of that. It’s the pronunciations that we’ve changed so badly that we can hardly understand them, and they have a hard time understanding us. Hell, we even have a hard time understanding each other sometimes! Have you ever seen someone with such a thick Cajun accent that they threw subtitles at it? My point is, it was the comparison. Christians no more “took over” those ancient ceremonies than American’s “took over” the English language and made our version of it our own.

No. Not a good comparison. Americans did not take over anything. To make a proper comparison, The Catholic church took CENTURIES of conquest and assimilation of core culture. They beheaded, burned, shot, enslaved people who didn’t believe as they did. Last I heard, if you spoke with a ‘Jersey accent, you were put on TV, not strung up.

Well, I think it is, and it’s all ridiculous. That’s all, @cazzie.

I guess it all has to do with perspective.

Last year my mother-in-law’s tree told me an offensive joke. What an rude tree.

Yes, @Dutchess_III, the Christians did, deliberately, take over the pagan rituals and co-opt them for their own purposes. Which is why there are bunnies and chicks and other fertility objects all tied up with Easter.

@Stinley In fact the date of Easter is not fixed, but instead is governed by the phases of the moon…

The date for Easter (or Resurrection Sunday for Christians) is indeed based on the lunar calendar. It is the final day of the Paschal Triduum, the days in which the central mystery of Christianity is celebrated. Since the first of the days commemorated at this time is the Last Supper, and the Last Supper was a Passover Seder, it is determined by the phases of the moon just as the date of the Passover is determined by the Jewish Rabbis. (Although sometimes the Jewish and Christian calendars disagree—Go figure!)

I’m an atheist, and I get a Christmas tree every year. Christmas trees are awesome.

I suspect incidents of people being offended by whatever holiday displays are very rare (I mean, consider how many people there are in your country, and how many examples of this you can think of). They are paid a lot of attention, because the stories in turn create outrage. Outrage is quantifiable in advertising dollars.

“A business in my town took their Christmas tree down because a customer was offended by it.”

Would the business put the tree back up if another customer came and said they were offended because there wasn’t a Christmas tree? That is what happened to Starbucks, but they didn’t put it back on their cup despite the many offendees.

“Do you think things have gotten so out of hand that everyone is offended by something and are not shy about expressing their displeasure?”

You betcha. 40% of Millennials OK with limiting speech offensive to minorities

Offended by a heathen symbol that represents Yggdrasil, the World Tree? Not at all.

@canidmajor I know that. I’m pretty sure Christmas started as a pagan celebration, too, probably marking the winter solstice. And the pagan celebration is tied to spring and planting and agriculture. And new life. Bunnies and chicks.

No, Christmas did not start as a pagan holiday. The conquering Christians, in order to assimilate the pagan population, very deliberately took over the solstice celebrations to promote their own religious agenda. It wasn’t about having a seasonal celebration.

Well, obviously Christmas didn’t start as a pagan holiday. The very name CHRISTmas tells us that. I’m saying that there was an exisiting celebration that the Christians co-opted, renamed, and redefined. But some of the old, pagan traditions linger, like the tree.

Every different job I’ve ever held, they always put up whatever decorations they wished, and it was never a big deal. One place had a Christmas tree and another tree for Black Peter – complete with coal.
Not until a Stupidvisor in a Vocational High School was there a huge fuss made. If we were to wish anyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, et.al.- we got written up. Permanent file. Gasp! To this day I still say Happy Holidays. It’s seared into my brain.
However, she never did see the strictly forbidden decorations in my room. I got some various color lites strands and looped then everywhere. They had a control on them for different light patterns. Each day, a different class period chose the light pattern for the day, rotating to choose any pattern. I had a couple of fiber optic characters up also. The kids loved it. Never squealed, nor got bent about who celebrated what. If caught, I could’ve been reprimanded with sanctions and such.
I can only imagine what would’ve happened had they seen all of the Halloween decorations and found out that I read ghost stories outloud by candlelight each period on the day celebrated….Oh well.

A Christmas tree is a pretty inoffensive thing. It doesn’t cause harm to anyone. If many people like it and one doesn’t does their offence trump everything else? I don’t think so. Put the tree back up!

You know this California shooting happened at a Christmas party. Is Christmas going to be banned to stop these shootings from happening again in the future?

@Dutchess_lll I’m not really offended by Easter or Christmas. I was speaking tongue in cheek since the whole situation described by OP is so ridiculous. The shopkeeper was the worst offender in my opinion. S/he should have left the tree up. The whole thing is just barmy.

Oh, I know that @Stinley! I was going to explain that I didn’t think you were serious, but it did underscore how “barmy” everything has gotten.

The thing is, I NEVER have to actually deal with that stuff IRL. I only see the outrage on the internet. Well, there have been a couple times, as I said in the past, when people in stores say ”MERRY CHRISTMAS” five times louder than they needed to, like a challenge or something. No one reacts, except perhaps to say “Merry Christmas” back.

Speaking of, there is a house around the corner that I go past every day. The other day I noticed that he’s put a large confederate flag up like a curtain covering the big front window of the house, and another flying off of his front porch. It’s probably been there for weeks, and I just never noticed before. I wonder if he’s bummed out because his actions have elicited absolutely NO reaction of any kind.

Yule Trees are pagan anyway, and yes, they’re trees, and really more a symbol of winter, ritual deforestation Capitalistmas than Christmas. Christians just appropriated the symbol and jammed it into their story and their modern imagery for it, as with so many other things.

I remember decades ago school teachers saying we could paint our classroom windows… but we couldn’t include religious symbols, including trees… I think we couldn’t paint presents or maybe even snowmen either. Enthusiasm went from “yay” to “blah” immediately. I did understand the reasoning they gave us, though which I think is sort of the same here, in a more adult and more dysfunctional context, which is essentially subtle peer pressure can make others feel left out because so many people are all mindlessly doing their thing… but ya the PC whirlwind and counter-whirlwinds are nuts these days.

I love trees, and Xma$ trees. The only things that bother me about the Xma$ trees are:

* Growing so many young trees and then killing them and tossing them fairly wastefully, in most cases. I’d like to see more uncut decorated trees that survive the ritual, and better use of the wood from the cut ones.

* They’re partly a symbol for me of the state of American culture and spirituality, which I find pretty dire.

But no, I think it’s dumb for a store to remove a tree due to a complaint. There are issues, but a tree in a store doesn’t seem likely to be on-point.

Wait! Jeremiah 10 says we aren’t even allowed to HAVE Christmas trees!