Could I Have an Opinionless Cashier, Please

This article in Yahoo News about a Home Depot employee who was fired for refusing to remove a pin from his apron that read "One nation under God" reminded me of some of the discussions I had with co-workers when I worked at a Home Depot. I worked at a store in Ohio when Bill O'Reilly started his big campaign to try to force retail stores to greet customers with "Merry Christmas" rather than something more generic like "Season's Greeting".

There were some staunch fundie employees who were convinced that a generic greeting was, at best, political correctness run amok, or at worst, an atheist conspiracy to wipe all references to Christianity out of the US. Efforts to make the fundies understand that a generic greeting was more inclusive and less likely to offend non-Xian customers was responded to with "Jesus is the reason for the season!" and similar cliches. Their insistence that Xmas was the only holiday that needed to be acknowledged was especially absurd that year because Dec. 25th was also the first day of Hanukkah.

What my co-workers and the guy in Florida could not wrap their minds around is that they don't have the right to advocate their own beliefs when they are being paid to reflect the policies of their employers and when their customers perceive them at representing their employers' views. Furthermore, others have the right to expect as much respect for their beliefs as the Xians demand for their own, and that people of other beliefs have as much right to be offended by a store representative advocating for Christianity exclusively (or theism in the case of the Floridian) as the Xian would be if the rep appeared to be promoting Wicca. The sense of entitlement among some Xians is so ingrained that conceptualizing other beliefs as having equal value would probably cause a brain aneurysm.

I think most US Xians, but especially fundamentalist, are so conditioned to unquestioningly accept what they've been told in church that they just cannot force their atrophied brain cells to think outside the little church-shaped box. People in the US with other beliefs don't have the luxury of such rigid thought because they are constantly bombarded with the message they are members of a lower class. Why else would something as innocuous as the phrase "There might not be a god" cause paroxysms of rage, or the mention of the proposed construction of a mosque or Buddhist temple in a neighborhood result in picketing, vandalism and threats of violence?

I can't imagine a life where I was dependent on someone else to tell me my opinions, especially if I was expected to believe that those opinions were facts, but it obviously has a strong appeal to a large number of Americans. I guess it's up to those of us with less impaired powers of cognition to keep chipping away at Xian cerebral concretions until, if they still don't understand, they might at least come to accept the fact that tolerance is the rule. Also, if someone proposed a law requiring periodic dope slaps for fundies, I'd support that.

Peace on Earth and Kill the Atheists

I worked at a retail store the year that Bill O’Reilly started his “War on Christmas” nonsense. Among my regular customers were people that I knew were Jewish. I also had customers from Japan, China, Arab nations, India and a bunch of other places. My first inkling that some Xians were outraged that stores’ employees were saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” was when a very angry looking sixtyish woman came into the store, stomped past the Christmas trees, past the decorations that spelled out “Merry Christmas” and past the inflatable lawn ornaments with “Merry Christmas” printed across them, to the customer service desk, where she demanded to know whether the customer service rep greeted customers with “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”. The CSR responded that she preferred to say “Happy Holidays”, triggering a “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” tirade from the woman before she stormed back out of the store leaving puzzled employees and customers in her wake.
There was no store policy about holiday greetings. Staff members were free to address customers in any civil manner they liked and virtually all of us would respond to a customer’s “Merry Christmas” greeting with something like “and Merry Christmas to you”. It’s just that some of the employees, like me, realized that our customers were not exclusively Christians, and that there were other holidays to celebrate at that time of year. Coincidentally, that year Hanukah began on Dec. 25th. , but some of the employees were obviously Bill O’Reilly fans or attended the same church as fans and “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” discussions occurred in the break room as well as at customer service.
Ultimately, the “Jesus” people were sure that there was some kind of conspiracy to completely remove all reference to Christianity from the month of December and they seemed to feel that Xmas was the one and only legitimate holiday in Dec. The “holiday” people lived in the real world and were aware that other people have a right to exist too.
I don’t know what Bill O’Reilly’s motivation is. He may believe there’s a war on Xmas or he may get off on creating nationwide outrage among conservative Xians. It is clear, however, that conservative Xians, who seem to require an enemy in order to feel fulfilled, believe that their world is under attack from the usual suspects and that they need to gird their arms and join the crusade before society collapses into an orgy of abortions and godless communism. So, the Jesus people get to feel enraged and outraged and persecuted and at war with everyone whose views differ from theirs (and who are therefore EVIL). Of course, if they win the war (oops, I mean when they win, because god is on their side) the world will be a better place because salespeople will say “Merry Christmas” to everyone as they kill each other while fighting over the last got-to-have-it-now-toy, and maybe they’ll say “peace on earth, good will toward mankind” too.