How difficult can this be?

’T is the season to give offence, it seems. Or should that be to take it? Perhaps it’s a bob each way. We know it’s supposed to be a season of giving, and receiving, but what’s happened as Christmas parade season gets into full swing this year seems to be taking things a bit far.

To be clear, Santa parade floats giving offence is not new. In 2016, organisers of Christchurch’s parade initially ruled out pulling a float featuring children dressed as First Nations people and Native Americans, which had been part of the parade for more than 20 years, despite a complaint saying it was ‘‘essentially redface’’, as well as ‘‘highly inappropriate and culturally insensitive’’. However when the parade took place, it featured no Native Americans, though there was a teepee on the front, and it was reported one of the parade organisers had received emails threatening to set the float on fire.

On that occasion, as with two instances in the first couple of weekends of this year’s parade season, a Lions Club float featuring participants in blackface in Ha¯ wera, and a float called Rednek Xmas, featuring a Confederate flag, at the Richmond parade at the weekend, there have been objections on the grounds of offence being caused, and responses along the lines of ‘‘What on earth is wrong with it? It’s only a bit of fun?’’

To which the obvious responses are that, firstly, it might be fun if you’re not part of one of the groups on the wrong side of the history those symbols represent. And secondly, that the world has moved on in the past few decades, and making decisions about whether or not something is acceptable without even considering the offence that could follow, or speaking to those who might be offended, is simply no longer acceptable.

The response from Glen James, owner of the Richmond float, to questions about the Confederate flag and its obvious historic connections to the American South, and slavery, was interesting: ‘‘In all honesty, we have all got a right to an opinion.’’ Does that mean putting a Confederate flag on a float is expressing the opinion that it’s all right? Or that calling a float something edgy like ‘‘Rednek Xmas’’ means anything on that theme is OK, even if it’s potentially offensive in its own right?

The small South Canterbury town of Pleasant Point has for years held a parade it labels ‘‘politically incorrect’’, for which no pre-parade registrations are taken, and news events of the year feature heavily. John Key (tugging on a ponytail), Brian Tamaki, Donald Trump, Tiger Woods and others have featured. But it’s a fairly blurred line, and it would be hard to convincingly argue that, for example, a float featuring ‘‘transgender weightlifters’’ last year didn’t cross it.

Potentially spiteful debates aside, surely the focus of Christmas/Santa parades is family, fun and inclusiveness, and if the message of the season really is ‘‘peace on earth and goodwill’’ to humankind, it can’t be that difficult to conduct these events without ill-considered and inappropriate floats that turn these parades divisive.

Perhaps this year’s indiscretions are the signal that parade organisers throughout the country should take a careful look at the formats of their events to ensure they can be enjoyed by all in their communities who want to be part of them.

It might be fun if you’re not part of one of the groups on the wrong side of the history those symbols

represent . . . The world has moved on in the past few decades.