Google provides an excellent search engine, which I have been using exclusively since I discovered it a few years ago, and also hosts the platform for this blog, Blogger.com.
A nice detail about Google is how they regularly modify their logo to reflect special dates on the calendar.
So I was a bit mystified when I had a look today, Christmas Day, and saw a happy kangaroo couple with their offspring. Moving the mouse over the image, I read: "Happy Holidays from Google."
I have written the following email to Laura Ainsworth, corporate communications coordinator:
Hello Laura,
Merry Christmas.
It would have been a nice touch for the roughly 2 billion of us Christians out here if your logo had made some reference today to the event that we are celebrating -- the birth of Jesus.
So I have been wondering -- what's with the kangaroos? What, if anything, do a happy kangaroo couple and their newborn have to do with the Blessed Virgin Mary, St Joseph and Jesus?
Might I ask that, on the second and 10 subsequent days of Christmas, Google change the logo to reflect that it is Christmas?
Yours sincerely,
Albion Land (Mr)
2 comments:
Any come-back on this, Albion?
Jonathan,
Nary a word, and I'm beginning to think there won't be.
This post seems to have generated no interest here, but I add something I wrote to someone elsewhere in response to her suggestion that I was over-reacting:
Are there not better things in the world to get exercised about, I was asked.
My response:
There are, indeed, better things to get exercised about, but that in no way mitigates the fact that this is something worth getting exercised about. The Christian religion, and the expression and practice thereof, are under a
double assault -- from post-modern secularists and atheists in the West, and from pre-modern radical Islam and Hinduism in and from the East. You cannot have been oblivious to this year's crop of incidents -- particularly in the United States and Britain -- of Christians being prevented from displaying the symbols of their faith in public during this time of year.
If you find these matters not worthy of getting exercised about, that is your choice. When I was baptised, I was signed with the sign of the Cross, that I "not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and
manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil."
That is my choice, and that is what I am doing.
My correspondent then said the Google story was quite sweet, suggesting that one could see in it a message of a family rejecting the commercialization of Christmas.
My response:
I think the Kanga story is quite sweet, too, because I think kangas are
quite sweet. But I'm not sure what the message is. You read into it anti-commercialisation. Perhaps. Creating gifts together? Very well could be. But gifts for what? For Christmas. But does Google say Merry Christmas? No.
A brief examination of the Google website will reveal a collection of past holiday logos. Google has had no hesitation to mark the birthdays or prominent dates in the lives of prominent people, and I commend them for it.
Witness: Louise Braille, Martin Luther King, Mozart's 250th, St Patrick, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edvard Munch.
So why not Jesus?
Ah, but in a fit of political correctness, one might worry about offending cultural and religious sensibilities, are of giving the impression of showing preference. Perhaps, if one is politically correct. Explain then, why there were logos for Thanskgiving, the Lunar New Year and, are you ready for this, the Persian New Year.
So why not Christmas?
I cannot speak to the reasons behind what Google has done. For The moment, I can only speak to what Google has done. As you see, I have written to the company and enquired. I look forward to a reply.
I was then taken to task for having "my" values and beliefs slighted.
My response:
As to your comment about something being a slight to *my* values and beliefs, I am not sure what you are driving at. Are you insinuating that, by some ontological sleight of hand, I have been converted into some sort of post-modern grinch by virtue of politely requesting that the birth of Jesus Christ -- the source of the values and beliefs of not only me but of
hundreds of millions more people -- be acknowledged, at least on a par with Edvard Munch?
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