A Greeting
Please accept with no obligation†, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, as recognised within parts of the northern hemisphere of the planet, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all; and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures, and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishees.
†By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one Gregorian calender year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.
Isn’t this the same greeting you used last year? Excellent use of recycling if so.
It’s had some modifications to address some complaints of hemisphereism and Ive clarified the definition of year, but yes, I troll this one out every year
I have to say as someone originating from the Southern Hemisphere I am disappointed by this greeting. Your constant hemispherism is deelply offensive. Why can you not accept that those in the other half of the world are also enjoying a solstice related holiday, though of the summer?
In addition you do not seem to acknowledge that gender is something which should be respected.
Finally, it would be best to point out that the Gregorian 2008 is not ‘generally accepted’, it is merely used for common translation, more than 80% of the population use different calendars in their daily lives and should not be subject to the assumptions of Gregorian hegemonists.
Accepting these I would like to return your wishes and hope you will be enjoying your post Solstice Parsnip Festival day.
The greeting was gender neutral and therefore respected peoples of any gender, the mention of winter solstice was fully qualified in so far as it applied to only a few parts of the planet.
As to the general acceptance of the the calender year 2008 I think one can argue that the majority of readers of this blog will acknowledge the upcoming year as 2008.
There’s just no pleasing some people
As a person with Antipodean relations (although I must stress ONLY by marriage) I too take slight offence to the hemisphobia of the greeting.
However I take it in the manner in which it was sent and would like to reciprocate these greetings to you Dom, and wish the rest of your blog contributors a very very happy Christmas and look forward to their continued banter in the New Year.
Greetings space-person (notice the politically correct address there) .. take me to your leader!
Cat - you started so well and then went and made a massive assumption about our politics and social structure. The PC brigade will be round shortly to punish you.
I’m sticking with “have fun” it’s safer
Bathgirl, your comment assumes they haven’t befallen some personal tragedy and have to, for example, go identify the body of a loved one. ‘Have fun’ would not work here.
Nanook, if I remember correctly your claim to Antipodean relations is via a man who left Australia because, and I quite, ‘there were too many bloody Australians’, now holds British passport and views anyone who lives outside the 4 walls of his house to be a ‘bloody foreigner’. I don’t think you can reclaim the moral high ground here
My dear Mr Davis you’re making the assumption I’m saying ‘have fun’ to everyone I meet kind of indscriminately #laughs# I promise I’m being selective :op