Happy Holidays: Scandalous?

Before I post a bunch of blog stuff about our 2012 holiday season, I feel the need to say a word or two about my use of the phrase "Happy Holidays".  Why?  Because I have been corrected a time or two down here in the buckle of the Bible Belt on my use of the term during the Christmas season.  Since southerners are so stinking sweet, they haven't been rude...just, well, I'll explain by way of different but similar example.  Have you ever heard a little kid mispronounce a word, and the adult they are speaking to then says the word back to the child properly...but very slowly and in a much louder than necessary voice so as to make an indelible mark on the child's mind about the proper pronunciation of that word?  Yeah, that's how it goes when I've said "Happy Holidays"...I am greeted back with a "M-E-R-R-Y C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S."   Okay, that's cool but...

First of all, I will continue to use the term holiday boldy, and refuse to give in to the craziness that is the supposed "War on Christmas" rhetoric.  

When I use the term "holiday", I use it as a respectful shortening of "holy day", as I think is its proper etymology...and, as an appropriate expression of the time of year that both Christians and Jews view as a set apart time of worship and remembrance.  Being somewhat of an anomaly (a.k.a."weirdo") in my personal faith and practice, I identify myself to some degree with both camps, Christians and Jews.  I am ultimately and eternally dependent on the advent of Jesus the Christ (Yeshua the Messiah) for my salvation...but I ALSO see him as providing me a way of being grafted in to the people of Israel, and of becoming a fellow heir of the promises given to Abraham.  I have grown to love the meaning and beauty in the celebration of Hanukkah during the winter season, and it has DEEPENED my walk with the Messiah of Israel.  In that spirit, my family celebrates all the feasts of the Bible, as well as Hanukkah, along with the children of Israel; and we choose to focus on Jesus' advent during the time of his actual coming 2,000 years ago, during the Feast of Tabernacles. So please, to those who take offense at my saying "Happy Holidays", I am not diminishing you or the way you celebrate the Advent of the Christ (though wouldn't that make it "Merry Christadvent?", that -mass thing is irksome to both my language police and protestant leanings...anywho).  I am simply being true to my faith and convictions, and endeavoring to extend a verbal expression of blessing to you in the Name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Father of my Master Yeshua the Messiah.  So relax.  I am not an non-religous person who is offended at your Baby Jesus, nor am I a pagan who wants you to acknowledge my wikkan practices, or other such silliness.  No need to loudly respond with an irritated "Merry Christmas." when I wish you a "Happy Holiday".  I love the baby Jesus too, and so do many who may choose to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". 

Sigh.  

So, Happy Holidays!  I hope your 2012 holiday season was filled with peace, contentment and the joy of knowing that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has provided a way of Salvation--Y'shua--through His Son, the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the nations. May that joyful knowledge be yours each day, and not just buried beneath the events of a few harried weeks in December.