No mo' "ho ho ho"

[Wilson Gray]

Could it truly be the case that *anyone* could possible believe that
women or children hearing a man in a Santa Clause costume saying "Ho!
Ho! Ho!" would think that the man was using the BE term for
"Prostitute! Prostitute! Prostitute!"? Y'all must be done lost y'all's
minds.

-Wilson

On 11/15/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: No mo' "ho ho ho"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> On Nov 15, 2007, at 6:08 AM, Charlie Doyle wrote:
>
> > From the AFP wire, posted at Yahoo! News:
> >
> > << Santas in Australia's largest city have been told not to use
> > Father Christmas's traditional "ho ho ho" greeting because it may be
> > offensive to women, it was reported Thursday. >>
> >
> > Santas in Sydney now say "Ha ha ha."
>
> next development, reported in several places, is rebellion.  from
>    http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=323141
> under the head "Sydney Santas rebel against ho-ho no-no":
>
> Sydney Santas have reportedly defied a request from a recruitment firm
> to replace "ho ho ho" with "ha ha ha".
>
> Two Santa trainees from Westaff, which supplies hundreds of men in red
> suits to Australian shopping centres, have quit over the politically
> correct new greeting, the Daily Telegraph reports.
>
> Trainees were told the traditional phrase could scare children and be
> taken as derogatory to women.
>
> "We ask our Santas to try techniques such as lowering their tone of
> voice and using 'ha ha ha' to encourage the children to come forward
> and meet Santa," Westaff's national Santa co-ordinator Sari Hegarty
> told the paper.
>
> But Santas at department stores David Jones, Myers and the Westfield
> shopping centre chain will still use the customary greeting as part of
> their customers Christmas experience.
>
> "Senior management (at Westaff) have assured us that Santas provided
> to David Jones have not been censored in any way," a David Jones
> spokeswoman told the Telegraph.
>
> Julie Gale from Kids Free to 2B Kids said Santa should be left alone.
>
> "We are talking about little kids who do not understand that 'ho ho
> ho' has any other connotation and nor should they," she told the paper.
>
>
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>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
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                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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