I work in a museum, for the time being, and there’s a lot of greeting and “how are you”s and “have a good day”s. The usual. It’s around this time of year, of course, that anyone in a customer service position generally exchanges the greetings matching the nature of the season. I always thought this was an optional pleasantry, considering I have gone YEARS without actually changing my greeting patterns for December.

But I guess that was before one of those jerks who believe there is a “war on Christmas” decided to enter my life a couple of days ago, and I got a stern talking-to about the meaning of the season. It should be noted that I was trying to usher him into the show he wanted to see while he was raving at me. I didn’t want him to have anything more to complain about, so I took getting him seated as my top priority, and missed a lot of what he was saying.

I did catch something about how this was America, and Christmas with Christ in it was a tradition and something about how I was apparently trying to erase all the grand things that we’re celebrating this season. I didn’t say a word on the subject in return because I knew that could only end badly. Especially if I let slip I was an atheist.

Of course, I wanted to ask him what it was that he was complaining about. I wanted to ask him how he felt chewing me out for not saying “Merry Christmas” when there actually were people who were dying in real wars. I wanted to ask him how many good Christians had died for saying “Merry Christmas”. I also wanted to ask why he considered other people acknowledging his beliefs was at all relevant to the show he was going to see.

We’re a science museum. It’s not as though this is the Ark Park.