Correctness or Christmas

Saw something last week that struck me funny (odd, not ha-ha), but I’ll leave it up to you to decide if it’s out there or not.

We process a lot of information in this business and I’ve been in the game a long time. I’ve covered some incredible things and reported on events that have changed people’s lives. But more and more these days it’s about being politically correct and saying the right thing instead of being real.

To my mind, you can’t gild the lily. You can try, of course, but truth is unvarnished and people in this profession pursue it everyday.

I applaud, for example, the coverage we provided concerning the recent public meeting gone awry in Greenwich. Reporter Kirk Starratt was there, in a prime position to record the moment. He did a great job; it’s what we do.

I’m sure you’ve either read or heard about what transpired and I won’t rehash the details. Suffice to say Kirk’s stories conveyed emotion; they detailed crucial community events that help to define and shape lives locally and enable our readers to determine what’s right and wrong and what works in Kings County.

There was no bafflegab, no political-speak. Like any journalist worth his weight - and I’ve been privileged to work with a number of them during my tenure here - the accounts were clear and precise. I didn’t have to figure out what was going on and I doubt anyone else who read the articles were in the dark, either.

But I processed some copy last week that left me scratching my head. There were dozens of references to the ‘Holiday’ season, but the word ‘Christmas’ was intriguingly absent.

Funny, too, that the word ‘holiday’ had a cap ‘H’ on it, as if to signify its ascendancy. We’ve had this discussion before: in schools, at home, in coffee shops, around town.

I don’t come down on the argument one way or another because a lot of it has to deal with personal choice and/or religion.

However, if you want to say ‘holiday’ (or anything else to acknowledge the season), fine. Don’t mediate it with a capital letter at the start of the word in an obvious attempt to elevate it in place of some other thing. It’s political correctness to the extreme and so transparent that I had trouble working the text.

Yes, we can anticipate the ‘holidays’, but if you mean ‘Christmas’, why not say so?

I understand other cultures celebrate the season in different ways and I respect their observances completely, but in copy designed purely to promote what we know as the ‘Christmas’ season – Santa, shopping, rampant consumerism and the like – I don’t think inserting a cap ‘H’ on ‘holiday’ does it.

We need clarity, kids, a willingness to say what we mean, not what other people expect us to say. Too often we dissemble for the sake of correctness, but there are situations where laying it out simply addresses the matter and I’m all for that.

Here’s the thing: if you’re ‘Christmas’ shopping, say so. If you wish to celebrate the ‘holidays’, right on. If neither of those work for you, I’m cool with that, too.

But don’t manufacture a cute idiom to satisfy someone else’s expectation. That’s a cheat and I’d rather we were honest with one another, especially at this time of year.