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Health & Fitness

How Displaying Holiday, Other Decorations Shouldn't Be Offensive

This is my feeling of how the displaying of holiday and other diverse symbols should not be considered offensive. Also, of how we should see them as celebrating diversity.

Here we are in the Holiday Season again, which is supposed to mean people will be displaying fun and festive decorations. There are different holidays from many diverse backgrounds that will be celebrated around this time of year, such as Christmas, Hanukkah and even Kwanza.

However, as we have seen in the past two years, we also have our opponents that will get upset and would want such decorations removed. This is very upsetting to me.

It is upsetting because I am a firm believer in this thing called DIVERSITY. Part of diversity is that we should be able to display our cultural, religious, and other background symbols and other items without being judged. We should also be able to display these symbols and decorations without being told to remove them by someone who may not share in our background.

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When I was younger, I was taught that tolerance and diversity meant that we accept everyone for who they are and what they believe in. I was also taught that people come from various backgrounds and to accept them as human beings.

All of this talk about removing this and removing that because someone may not share the culture of the displayed symbol… If I had my say, the solution would be, "Bring all the symbols and decorations from ALL of the diverse backgrounds in one display." This way we can all can be happy.

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Unfortunately, there is the law of "Church vs. State." However, as I have witnessed, this law maybe going too far. I am hearing incidents of people having to remove symbols of their backgrounds from their clothes or others claiming of being "offended" because someone may have a Christmas decoration on their door – I know it happened to one of my neighbors.

Now here's a question: What is offensive about a Christmas tree, or a menorah, or even a wreath? Well, I can answer NOTHING! There is nothing showing anything "insulting" in them. Now, displaying of Swastikas, or displaying of the N-word or even the so-called "cuss-words" are considered offensive.

We may have different beliefs, cultures, religions, and other backgrounds, but we all are Human Beings. This world we live in is a colorful, beautiful place because of all of the differing diverse backgrounds we have.  

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