Jim Six: Thank you, same to you

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Have you seen the cool chart that’s making the rounds on the Internet, at least on Facebook?

It gives you an appropriate answer for whatever holiday someone wishes you.

Suppose some says Merry Christmas? What should you say, especially if you are not a Christian?

If someone wishes you a Happy Kwanzaa and you’re not an African-American?

Well, this clever chart suggests that, no matter what your persuasion, there’s no reason to enter into a dialogue, discussion, argument or tirade, explaining that you are not someone who celebrates that particular holiday, or someone who demands particularly hard-core political correctness.

Instead, the appropriate answer to any of these holiday wishes is a simple, “Thank you. You, too.”

Pretty straightforward, isn’t it?

Now we all can be good to each other and the season will be bright and jolly.

Of course, that’s not really going to happen, is it? Because prejudice.

Even though Pope Francis said everyone, even atheists, can go to heaven if they do good, a Vatican priest popped up to explain that the pope misspoke: You have to be saved to go to heaven. In his case, you have to be a Catholic to go to heaven. Sorry. Looks like damnation for all other denominations.

Which is really silly, isn’t it? Either people who do good go to heaven or nobody does. It would be ridiculous and discriminatory to believe otherwise.

Unless you’re an atheist, in which case, what do you care?

It’s hard enough to know what to believe without all this religious wrangling. Frankly, whatever you choose to believe or not believe is fine with me. Just don’t try to proselytize, OK?

A kid I’d grown up with became an evangelical Christian in his 20s. I ran into him again when I was a community organizer and he was a gang worker for the city of Philadelphia. Every time he’d see me, he’d follow “Hello” with his born-again spiel — explaining vigorously that I’d face damnation unless ... Well, I finally told him that, while I liked him and he had earned some leeway because we’d grown up together, the next time he presumed to tell me where I would wind up when I died, I would punch him in the face. He stopped.

I didn’t plan to hit him, really, but I was agitated enough to do so.

Now, I am calm. I suggest we all just get along. If someone wishes you “Happy Foreign-Sounding Holiday,” just say, “Thanks. Same to you.”

It will lower your stress level.