{"id":1351,"date":"2010-12-13T05:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T12:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1351"},"modified":"2010-12-13T05:00:50","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T12:00:50","slug":"gladys-kravitzs-spirit-at-fbc-dallas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1351","title":{"rendered":"Gladys Kravitz’s Spirit At FBC Dallas!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When most people are getting into the Christmas spirit, leave it to one of Southern Baptist’s premier mega-churches to keep the spirit of Gladys Kravitz alive and well.\u00a0 Gladys and her husband, Abner, were the across-the-street neighbors to Darrin and Samantha Stephens on the classic 1960’s sitcom, Bewitched<\/em>. (For the record, I’ll take Darrin #1, played by the late Dick York.)<\/p>\n

Poor Gladys — busy-body extraordinaire — was\u00a0always on the look-out for strange happenings at the Stephens’ home.\u00a0 Although Gladys Kravitz was a relatively minor fictional character during\u00a0Bewitched’s\u00a0<\/em>eight year run,\u00a0\u00a0her name has become synonymous with a “nosy neighbor or colleague.”\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>And, that’s not meant as a compliment!<\/p>\n

During a time in our country where almost 10% of the population is unemployed and many hard-working Americans are just trying to make ends meet for their families, along comes First Baptist Church Dallas to contribute some holiday<\/del> (oops, sorry) Christmas cheer.\u00a0 It seems that\u00a0this historic church, under the leadership of Senior Pastor Robert Jeffress, has decided\u00a0that\u00a0one of the best ways to\u00a0proclaim the message of Christ to their neighbors\u00a0this Christmas is by\u00a0labeling\u00a0businesses\u00a0“naughty” or “nice.”<\/a><\/p>\n

In what has to be one of the most interesting (read bizarre) ideas in the ongoing culture wars and battle over Christmas, FBC Dallas created a website — www.grinchalert.com<\/a> — which encourages its members (and others) to act as the Christmas police when out and about shopping:<\/p>\n

Have you encountered a \u201cGrinch\u201d this Christmas season? Share your experiences here at GrinchAlert.com! Here, you can nominate businesses<\/a> and organizations that shut-out expressions of Christmas in their interactions with the public via marketing, advertising and public relations. When companies use misplaced political correctness to halt the celebration of Christmas, they belong on the \u201cNaughty List.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When an employee of a store or business (either in person or on the phone) refuses to say “Merry Christmas” or otherwise acknowledge that the only holiday between the fourth Thursday in November and the first day of January is Christmas, then an appropriate citation<\/del>\u00a0online comment should be post forthwith on the Grinch Alert website.\u00a0 You just can’t make up stuff like this.<\/p>\n

Already, naughty citations are pouring in from all over the country.\u00a0 Well, not really pouring.\u00a0 Maybe just trickling — only 18 listed as “naughty” businesses so far, including Delta and American Airlines.\u00a0 (I can’t really argue about the label for American Airlines being naughty after\u00a0they sent\u00a0me a form letter denying my request to waive $150 (x5)\u00a0change fees when\u00a0our family had\u00a0to reschedule flights because\u00a0of a doctor-ordered,\u00a0must-have MRI for my son, who has\u00a0Perthes Disease in his right hip — Merry Christmas AA!)<\/p>\n

Why is FBC Dallas encouraging folks to look for ways to be easily offended this Christmas season?\u00a0 We should not be surprised when secular businesses — whose bottom line is making\u00a0money by serving Christians and non-Christians — instruct their employees to offer a\u00a0generic greeting such as “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry Christmas.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Contrary to the stated purpose of Grinch Alert, there is no business or company\u00a0in this country that has the power to “use\u00a0misplaced political correctness to halt the celebration of Christmas<\/em>.”\u00a0\u00a0Does anyone honestly think that because employees at the Sonic in Wichita Falls, TX (the first one\u00a0listed\u00a0as “naughty”<\/a>\u00a0— Gladys Kravitz would certainly agree, especially in a town with that name) refuse to say “Merry Christmas,” but will only utter those intentionally evil words, “Happy Holidays,” that somehow the Christmas celebrations in this Texas town will come to a halt?<\/p>\n

And, why limit the Grinch Alert to just businesses?\u00a0 Why not open it up for individuals to be labeled naughty or nice?\u00a0 I’ll nominate myself for the naughty list.\u00a0 I have already wished some of my friends and fraternity brothers a “Happy Hanukkah.”\u00a0 Drats!\u00a0 I could have\u00a0avoided the naughty list\u00a0and wished them a “Merry Christmas” instead.\u00a0 After all, why let\u00a0the obvious fact\u00a0that they are Jewish and they and their families celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah and not Christmas disqualify me from the nice list?<\/p>\n

Maybe if we were really concerned about keeping Christ in Christmas, we would do more to reflect His love, peace and joy in our lives, not just at Christmas, but throughout the year.\u00a0 People in our communities, including Dallas, need neighbors\u00a0who shine the light of Jesus Christ, not channel the spirit of Gladys Kravitz!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When most people are getting into the Christmas spirit, leave it to one of Southern Baptist’s premier mega-churches to keep the spirit of Gladys Kravitz alive and well.\u00a0 Gladys and her husband, Abner, were the across-the-street neighbors to Darrin and Samantha Stephens on the classic 1960’s sitcom, Bewitched. (For the record, I’ll take Darrin #1,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,11,35],"tags":[85,141,225,271,276,299,310,379,442,461,474,649,849],"class_list":["post-1351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-culture","category-religion","tag-american-airlines","tag-bewitched","tag-christmas","tag-culture-wars","tag-dallas","tag-delta-airlines","tag-dick-york","tag-fbc-dallas","tag-gladys-kravitz","tag-grinch-alert","tag-happy-holidays","tag-merry-christmas","tag-robert-jeffress"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-lN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}