{"id":153,"date":"2005-12-21T08:42:36","date_gmt":"2005-12-20T21:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/?p=153"},"modified":"2007-12-30T21:14:37","modified_gmt":"2007-12-30T11:14:37","slug":"christmas-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2005\/12\/21\/christmas-threats\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Threats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past few weeks, you&#8217;ve probably heard this expression a few times:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If I don&#8217;t see you before then, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Am I the only one who sees an implied threat here? What if they <em>do<\/em> see you before then? <\/p>\n<p>Should I  infer that it means &#8220;Well, in that case, I hope you have a terrible Christmas, and a tragic New Year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hold on&#8230; No,  I am reading too much into this here.  (A implies B) does not imply (not A implies not B).<\/p>\n<p>The way it should be read is, &#8220;If I don&#8217;t see you again, then Happy and Merry etc&#8230; If I do see you again, then I reserve the right to change my hopes and wishes for you. It depends on how you behave the next time I see you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Christmas, it seems, is a time of <em>conditional and short-term<\/em> goodwill to all!<\/p>\n<p>Let me wish all my readers an unconditional merry, happy and long, rest-of-their-lives!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If &#8211; and only if &#8211; I don&#8217;t see you before then, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30,21,27],"tags":[195,371],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-observation","category-thoughts-from-the-shower","tag-christmas","tag-humour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}