Let's put civility back in Christmas

     I promise, if you wish me "Happy Holidays," that I will not bite your head off, remind you that it's Christmas, and admonish you for missing the point of Christmas. I'll just say, "Thank you. Same to you."
     I may reply, "Merry Christmas to you," and I hope you don't think I'm being a smartaleck. I really mean it, and that's all I mean, so just accept my best wishes and we can avoid a tense moment, okay?
     Christmas season is tense enough without obsessing over how we wish each other well, in my opinion. Frankly, I don't understand how it got to be a competitive sport to show up three days early at a discount store to get a few dollars off something that will be in a yard sale in a year.
     True, I am known as a bit of an iconoclast, full of questions, and even challenges of some of the rituals we humans observe, but when it comes to Christmas, I'm a softy. And if someone else feels the same way about the traditions of a different religion than the one I grew up with, I get it. It's okay with me.
      One of the things I picked up when I started in Sunday School at the age of five was that we're supposed to be kind to each other. Even Samaritans, although I still am not sure how Samaritans were or are different; I just learned that there is such a thing as a good Samaritan, and that's reassuring to me now, just as it was when I was five.
     No sense in ticking off the Samaritans unnecessarily, is all I'm saying.