So, earlier this summer I was fortunate enough to experience the wedding of a dear, dear friend of mine back home in Virginia. As a part of my pre-flight packing, I biked down to one of our local drugstores to pick up a card for the bride and groom. I admit, the selection wasn’t amazing, but there were a good 25-30 choices to be had.
And these choices had a pretty clear organization: “Religious” and “Everything Else.”
Maniy, via flickr
So the “Everything Else” section (you know the whole slew of choices: “From Us,” “Second Marriage,” “Third-Cousin Twice Removed”) was pretty scant. I mean, there were maybe three cards that even worked for my place in things as a single friend of the couple. And those three or so cards were pathetic, either with three paragraphs of text about what a marriage should look like (note: don’t rely on greeting cards for marriage counseling) or were so vapid I couldn’t let a good friend have it. So, begrudingly, I started opening the “Religious” cards.
Guess what the only difference was? Instead of “We love you guys,” these cards said “You’re a blessing to us.”
And I was a little intrigued. Is that really religious language?
Of course blessings have religious connotations, going back in all kinds of religius traditions. But somehow, I always think of blessings as something more spiritually benign. “I feel blessed” doesn’t always mean a literal giving of divine fortune, and to be a “blessing” to someone often means being in the right time and place. To me, it’s just a common turn of phrase, a more elegant want to say you appreciate someone or something.
But apparently greeting card companies disagree. They apparently have a broader definition of “religious” than I might.
I, for one, have no issue with that kind of language, and bought a “religious” card as a result. It’s a beautiful sentiment. But I wonder if others have different takes on this, both secular and religious folks and everyone in-between. What’s your take on common religious expressions, and is there any harm to their wide use?
Tags: Blessing, Christianity, Language, Secular
