All,

While I agree with Gary (Go Mets!) and the point I believe some of you are trying to make, it is important to not be completely dismissive and minimizing of every name change attempt/conversation for the sake of "getting along with one another" (a.k.a. comfort). In some cases, names can be offensive, appropriative, exclusionary, discriminatory, etc.

In these instances, regardless of how uncomfortable or challenging the conversations may be, people can possibly benefit from pushing their personal edges and getting to a place where they can listen to one another.

As Lonnie Somer pointed out, there is likely no known publicly exclusionary or discriminatory usage of the word "Christmas" in the CBC. That being said, let us (everyone on this listserv) not publicly pile on those who came forward in an attempt to start a conversation.

If you found yourself impacted, at any point in time, by any perspective shared in this thread, I invite you to ask yourself the following questions:

What is my deeper need?

What am I trying to protect?

What part of my personal history is activated by all of this?

May your Christmas Bird Count (or whatever you personally call it) bring you a sense of inner peace, awe, and inspiration.

- Carmelo

On Nov 28, 2020, at 10:47 AM, Dennis Paulson <dennispaulson at comcast.net> wrote:

 Well said, Gary. There are so many more important things to change in the world than the names of things. Let's expend our energies in figuring out ways of getting along with one another.

Dennis Paulson
Seattle


On Nov 28, 2020, at 8:19 AM, Gary Bletsch <garybletsch at yahoo.com<mailto:garybletsch at yahoo.com>> wrote:


Dear Tweeters,

May the name "Christmas Count" remain. It's called a Christmas count; there's nothing wrong with calling it such.

When I was a kid birder in New York, most of the older birders who mentored me on my first CBC's were Jewish. None of them had any beefs (or porks!) with the name.

It would be hard to find anyone on this planet who loved Christmas more than I did as a kid. I was the last one on the block to stop believing in Santa Claus. By the time I was sixteen or so, however, the excesses of the season began to inflict their existential nausea upon my spirit. Those excesses have multiplied to a staggering degree since then. My revulsion for this annual cacophonous glut can hardly be expressed.

Last December, I made my escape to South America, where I detected nary a hint of yuletide mania until about the 20th of December. Glorious! I was all ready to make it an annual habit when the pandemic came along.

Even so, the Christmas Bird Count is one of the few things that I do like about December-- other than the beginning of lengthening hours of daylight in our hemisphere.

My objection to the suggested name change, then, is not because I want to put the "Christ back in Christmas," or because I want to fight a rearguard action against what some call "the war on Christmas."

Far, far from it! I just don't like this penchant for taking a belt sander to anything rough or nettlesome in a word or name. I characterize it as a misguided attempt to protect tender feelings, bordering on the self-righteous. Such rechristenings always remind me of Brave New World, where all of the steeple crosses had their tops sawn off, turning them into capital T's, in honor of Henry Ford's Model T automobile. How Orwellian!

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch


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