No Offense, But Merry Christmas

As a Jew, I would like to tell you how I feel with people wishing me Merry Christmas….

I LOVE IT.

There is nothing better than a friendly greeting and a smile. I have never ever nor will I ever take offense to it. Put it up on the schools, plaster it to the public square. It is a time of joy for a huge portion of our country. 

I am even more thrilled when my Christian and Muslim colleagues wish me a happy new year during my holiday of Rosh Hashanah (though I occasionally get a Happy Yom Kippur, too, which is like wishing me "Happy Appendicitis Day").

But go ahead and string the lights, deck the halls, inflate the snow man on the front yard and put up those lighted deer. (By the way it wasn't me last year that perched them to look like they were mating. I paid the kid down the street ten bucks to do it while you were at work.)

So go ahead and wish me Merry Christmas till ginger bread and fruit cake seep from our pores.

Oh yeah…and drop those peanut butter chocolate ball things off in the ER or any other place where those of us work on Christmas Day because you can only eat so much Chinese food.

May we all have peace and goodwill.

Dr. Louis M. Profeta is an emergency physician practicing in Indianapolis. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Patient in Room Nine Says He's God.

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