Politics

Congressmen say ‘Merry Christmas,’ rejecting political correctness [VIDEO]

Nicholas Ballasy Senior Video Reporter
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Republican Reps. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Tom Reed of New York told The Daily Caller that they disagree with the Congressional Franking Office banning “Merry Christmas” in official mail — and wished TheDC’s readership a “Merry Christmas.”

Watch:
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“I will say Merry Christmas to you now. I will say Merry Christmas to you on the day of Christmas and I’ll say Merry Christmas to every one of my constituents back in the 29th Congressional District. It’s what the holiday’s all about and it’s about also recognizing the other holidays, you know, Happy Hanukkah,” said Reed.

“You deal with that political correctness. I have seen that and I’ve dealt with that, you know, people trying to say ‘oh, you need to be more sensitive to the political correctness of the holidays’ and to me, that’s not who we are.”

Rep. Lankford told TheDC, “Let me just start by saying this to anyone who’s watching, Merry Christmas to you as we look forward to the year but it was a frustrating thing to me to get a message from the Franking Office here in the House that just said, here’s the things that you should say. … From our e-newsletter that’s going out, we have a lot of things that we send out every time, it’s the Christmas week, we’re going to mention Merry Christmas on it.”

The ban has not stopped Republican Congressman Steve Womack of Arkansas from singing Christmas carols at the Capitol.

“I’ll be home for Christmas,” he sang during a press conference this week, when expressing disapproval of the Senate leaving town during the payroll tax cut debate.

Democratic Michigan Rep. Sander Levin told TheDC that he wasn’t familiar with the rule.

“They don’t want us to send out holiday cards with government postage so I haven’t seen the memo but I’ll take a look at it,” he said.

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