The latest highly-publicized suspiciously-well-timed battle in the War on Christmas involves a woman in Florida who says she was fired from her job for saying Merry Christmas:
Tonia Thomas says she was terminated two weeks ago from her job at Counts Oakes Resort Properties in Panama City after balking at the rule because it went against her religion. She is suing for lost wages, she said.
Thomas offered to use a generic greeting or say "Merry Christmas" to callers instead, but that offer was denied by company President Andy Phillips, according to the Liberty Counsel — the Christian-based legal group representing her.
"She said, ‘That goes against my religious beliefs; I’m participating in secularizing Christmas,’" Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mathew Staver told FOXNews.com. "She asked him for an accommodation … and he refused."
Although actually, it’s not secularism Ms. Thomas has an issue with so much as it’s other religions:
"I hold my core Christian values to a high standard and I absolutely refuse to give in on the basis of values. All I wanted was to be able to say ‘Merry Christmas’ or to acknowledge no holidays," she said Tuesday. "As a Christian, I don’t recognize any other holidays."
Her employers, on the other hand, felt that accommodating Ms. Thomas’ wish to express her disrespect for their religious traditions with customers was an undue hardship on the conduct of their business, so they required her (as many employers do) to use a script:
Andy Phillips, the company’s President said what is being reported in the media is false and said he fired Thomas for different reasons.
"We have a situation with a disgruntled employee who was terminated for insubordination and gross misconduct. She was not terminated and I want to make that very clear, she was not terminated for saying Merry Christmas," Phillips said.
Phillips says the greeting his employees are supposed to say changed after Thanksgiving and he felt the need not to single out any other holiday this time of the year.
"But there’s also Hanuka and we want to make sure we put a script in place that was not offensive to someone who did not celebrate Christmas," Phillips said.
But hey, Liberty Counsel is on the case:
Liberty Counsel is a non-profit public interest law firm and ministry that provides free legal assistance in defense of Christian religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, and the traditional family… A close partnership exists between Liberty University, its newly formed Jesse Helms School of Law, and Liberty Counsel. Liberty University was founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Mat Staver serves as the law school’s Dean. In 2006 Liberty Counsel’s payroll was taken over by Liberty University/Falwell Ministries and Liberty Counsel became Jerry Falwell’s in-house religious liberties advocacy group.
Which is kind of ironic. Because the lawsuit, except for the hit of yuletide publicity, is apparently not going to accomplish much.
Thomas could have hard time winning the case, said G. Thomas Harper, a Jacksonville-based labor attorney who writes a newsletter on Florida employment law.
"I wouldn’t think an employee has the right to insist (on saying Merry Christmas) unless that really is a tenet of their faith. She would have to make a strong case that was part of her beliefs, if not, it becomes insubordination," he said.
. . . because Florida is a employment-at-will state:
The "employment-at-will" doctrine in Florida is based on the general rule that employment can be terminated by either the employer or employee for any reason. No reason is required for a company to fire an employee in Florida… The employment-at-will relationship between employer and employee changes if there is a contract between the parties, or if both parties are subject to a union contract, in which case the relationship is governed by the contract terms.
. . . and Thomas doesn’t have a union contract. Florida is a Right to Work state where the laws make it very difficult to have an active union.
There is hope for the future Liberty Council lawsuits, though. The Right to Work movement recently lost two of its strongest champions: National Right to Work Committee board member Jerry Falwell, and "staunch ally" Jesse Helms.
And God bless us, every one.
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It must be brutal going through life seeing everything as some sort of infringement on your ability to worship your imaginary cloud dweller.
The funny thing is that Christ himself, with his “render unto Caesar” doctrine (aka knowing when to quit), would be on the side of her bosses.
No kidding.
No wonder so many X-tiantists are so dam angry all the dam time.
FunnyDiva
Hiya Firepups!!!!!!
Snarkassie!!!!
How are you, Snarkita? How’s school?
FunnyD
Just cause you don’t celebrate them doesn’t mean you shouldn’t recognize them.
Ho, ho, ho! She hasn’t got a chance in he__.
This is what happens when you have folks like O’Reilly and his phony war, and then, God help us, the federal government issuing a rule that employees get to decide whether they’ll serve a customer (the “employee free choice act).
Whatever happened to “my right to do fling out my arms ends at the tip of your nose?” Crazy.
And, I’ve been a customer service employee require, well, encouraged, to say “Happy Holidays.” And while it feels a little weird, in a way, I understood very well that I could have no idea whether the caller would be offended by A Merry Christmas or a Happy Chanukah.
Although, I found myself avoiding saying anything until the caller wished me a happy holiday or a Merry Christmas, because last year, a lot of folks wished a “happy holiday” came back w/ an emphatic “Merry CHRISTMAS!!”
There’s no way to win these days.
Thank goodness I was out of that job by this Christmas.
Gold honor roll!!
5 A’s and 1 B :D
If Tonia Thomas needs to assert her religion on the job, she should simply go work for her church. Otherwise, she needs to learn to separate her religion from her secular life.
Good on ya, kiddo! Keep it up!
FunnyD
Hooray!
What’s your major going to be when you hit college?
political science or journalism or both
my strong suspicion as a Christian is that fundie leaders wouldn’t recognize Christ if they saw him giving the Sermon on the Mount. They’d call him a godless liberal, and probably a terrist, and immediately start making deals with the neocons rethugs (Romans) to get him out of the way.
Like I said earlier, Christ himself would be siding with her bosses. You take your bosses’ money, you do what they want. You do what you want on your own time. That’s how smart evangelicals I know handle the situation — they don’t go making a fuss over it.
Does anyone else but me end up at the very top of the post when they hit “refresh”?
Of course — he’s a dirty long-haired sandal-wearing son of a Jewish mother!
I don’t. What browser are you using?
You’re a brave kid, what with all the newspapers folding. Then again, maybe the net might be able to support hardcore journalism from net ad revenues by the time you’re out of college.
I like this billboard.
I just got back from a run to the grocery store and of the dozen or so people I know and spoke with, not one said Merry Christmas.
That’s progress in a progressive community.
Every day is just another beautiful day.
Chrome. It’s what opened. Should I switch to FF?
I agree about the braveness! (brave-ity? Bravura?)
OTOH, as Kassie pointed out long ago about a school assignment, dead-tree newspapers aren’t the only place to practice journalism.
Follow your passion, kiddo. I know you’re smart enough to parlay whatever you learn into a earning living and helping others understand the world better.
FunnyD
LOL!
must remember that!
goooood un’ Ted666!
May I suggest Poli Sci and something like English instead of Journalism? From all appearances, Journo schools offer a great course in group thinking rather than in critical thinking. Most of the really good reporters I’ve known (including my sister) majored in other than Journalism. Take a journalism course or two, but not as a major. More rather as an opportunity to know what you are going to be fighting against.
ah, delight in the fruits of religion.
Cassie, hugs! Miss you a bunch, glad to see you.
Christians should learn that Merry Christmas is a joke. Christmas is a bastardization of The Pagan celebration of the Winter Soltice. Sostice celebration included the Yule Tree, Yule Logs, Beer, Food and merry making. In order to get the Pagans to buy into Christianity, the two elements were blended together. Since Pagans were already having a lengthy period of celebration in December, the birth of Christ was superimposed on it. The birth of Christ is probably not December 25th. It is presumed by many to have occurred at another date. The calender is all fucked up anyway.
This Merry Christmas greeting and all the trappings of Christmas are as Pagan as they are Christian. It can be easily argued that they are more Pagan.
So Christians that get all hung up on Merry Christmas are (as usual) ignorant of the history of their own religion. Many are willfully ignorant because they refuse to read anything – including their own bibles. This is not to say that the bible is full valuable truths. It is full of inconsistent superstitious folk tales and lots of horrible acts and calls for the murder of children and non-believers. Check out Deuteronomy.
Hiya Margot!
We try to get our humans to act like machines and our machines to act like humans. We fail in both attempts. When we turn around and wonder how we got to where we are, this will be part of the answer.
That, and the response I got from the only human available to interact with the dwellers of a fairly large condo: “Our primary function is to protect the board from lawsuits.” Not to help the people who live in the condo to have pleasant lives. Not to build goodwill. Not to save the wildlife that is left.
I hope that everyone has pleasant holidays (whatever they may be) and a happy new year (assuming that you start your new year on January 1st). To any of my persuasion, Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year. I hope that you find nice music to listen to. My current best pick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbtHjcdhBKI
YMMV ;-)
Merry Christmas and Marriage means one man and one woman for the past 5000 years. Ask Pastor Warren. /s
Opera has been bouncing me all over the page today, but does usually put me in the middle of the post.
At some point it’s become a tenet of Christianity to be intolerant of other beliefs, and to protest as intolerant anyone who does not comply with your own. hallefukinlulia
The best evidence for the time of Jesus’ birth is around the 25th of June (on our current calendar). “Christianity” is a bogus religion made up by a guy who used to make his living killing the followers of Jesus. The entire New Testament is written by people who weren’t even born when Jesus was around. And as far as I can tell from reading the Bible – Jesus died as an observant Jew.
Almost every single celebration of the so-called Christian church is a bastardized ‘pagan’ celebration. It is how they gained acceptance in many countries – adopt the locals’ celebrations – call them something else, make a ’saint’ out of the idol or whoever they honored in local custom and then pretend that it was all theirs from the get go.
And finally, all the so-called Christians who are always running around shoving their religion in your face and telling everyone that they are a Christian, IMHO aren’t. If they truly were, We would know them by their works. In my experience, if someone tells you they are a Christian, watch your back. All the ones I have known have been liars, thieves, back-stabbing, bigotted, racist, judgmental and money-grubbing individuals. Not to say that some non-Christians aren’t all those things too – but a preponderance of my personal anecdotal evidence…well, it’s what I have experienced.
I am sick to death of this so-called war on Christmas. War? The same people who are yelling about this are contributing to the mass commercialization and consumerism of this holiday – and I doubt they even understand what it all means anyway. Some nutbag was defendinng a Santa Claus for crying out loud.
Happy Holidays. (BTW, Holiday is a derivative term for ‘holy days’. So what is so damned offensive about that!)
Take care all firepups, enjoy your families, celebrate your own holiday or none at all as you wish. Love one another and pray for peace. And I mean that in a totally secular and non-religious way!
yep. theologically speaking, Christmas is not a particularly important holiday in the calendars of most Christian denominations. In fact, many of the Christmas practices we dutifully deserve today were based on quaint local customs that Dickens publicized and helped to institutionalize for the Anglo tradition we observe today….
New post upstairs
Damn right. This woman is in no way responsible for the diminution of her own dignity. It’s entirely the fault of those Happy Holidays bastards.
And clearly, that’s the only reason she was canned. The fact that she’s a flaming horse’s ass who thinks her employer’s entire reason for being is to pander to whatever religious belief she decides to pull out of her butt that day is entirely beside the point.