The Twelve Days of Holiday

Michael Graham comments on Amazon.com's decision (since rescinded) to substitute "Holiday" for Christmas in the phrase "Twelve Days of Christmas."

On The First Day Of Holiday, My True Love Gave To Me...

Now we have some pretty odd traditions here in Boston, I'll admit. Our mayor, for example, holds lightings of the "Holiday" tree, the "Annual" tree and in classic goverment-worker speak, the "Official" tree, while other cities content themselves with Christmas trees.

But the "12 Days of Holiday"--what the heck is that? Does Amazon also sell items to Jewish Americans for their eight nights of "coincidental gift giving" every December? The phrase "12 Days of Holiday" makes no sense. If it's the "12 days of HOLIDAYS," it could describe the actual work attendance of government employees during the Christmas season I suppose.

And from the Corner - Mark Steyn:

Seven customer care representatives a-leaping [Mark Steyn]


Following my post yesterday on Amazon.com's bizarre "Twelve Days Of Holiday" campaign, an unseasonably intemperate reader wrote:

Don't like Amazon? Don't shop at it then, you clot. Nobody really gives a damn if some online retailer is insufficiently Christian for your tastes. Nobody.

Oh, I don't know. The "Twelve Days Of Holiday" promotion has now been amended to "The Twelve Days Of [click here for offensive C-word]". So, if I'm a clot, I'm Rudolph the Red-Nosed Clot in whose wake you run-of-the-sleigh clots follow.

To be honest, I mildly regret this instant corporate capitulation as sometime Cornerite Michael Graham has started up a poll to find out your favorite "Twelve Days Of Holiday" song. As I write, the runaway winner is "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Thursday".

[UPDATE: Things are going from bad to Norse:

Some may find it offensive to officially promote the Norse gods, so I believe it would be best to quit using terminology such as "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday" and "Friday" for our weekdays. Clearly, "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Thursday" is highly offensive to those who do not worship Thor, and thus a more appropriate holiday song should be "It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like The Fifth Day of the Week".

But only if you assume the week begins on Sunday, as so many C-word obsessives do. Another reader writes:

Surely we should avoid offending those who do not worship Thor, god of thunder. So it should be “It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like the 4th day of the week”.

How about "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Lunchtime"?