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When I say Happy Holidays, I mean Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, not happy whatever other holiday other people celebrate.
Well wishes are supposed to be targeted for people OTHER than yourself. You are celebrating Christmas and New Year so it is reasonable to expect others to wish YOU Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. But if someone else is NOT celebrating them . . . it makes little sense to say so to THEM.
Do you greet people with "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays?" An Arizona woman, who’s also a bell ringer for the Salvation Army, says she was assaulted for choosing the wrong one.
Kristina Vindiola says a woman hit her outside a Phoenix Walmart after she said "Happy Holidays."
"The lady looked at me,” said Vindiola. “I thought she was going to put money in the kettle. She came up to me and said, 'Do you believe in God?' And she says, ‘You're supposed to say Merry Christmas,' and that's when she hit me."
Why do some people try to twist a simple greeting into some huge deal?
I don't think it was started with 'Happy Holidays'. That term in itself is generic and all-encompassing for many different faiths and traditions. However, I can understand why many people got offended when white liberal apologists started referring to the 'Holiday Tree'. To me, that is just as offensive as calling a Menorah a "Holiday Candle Holder".
I have not tolerance for intolerance. So tolerate that!
I think what would bother me in conversations of this sort is that the kinds of things people want us to tolerate are things that should not be. Ideas and concepts are not to be "tolerated". We should respect people, not ideas.
Ideas should constantly and consistently be unpacked, evaluated, tested and more. We should not tolerate or respect them. Rather they should be constantly and consistently reviewed like Internet Data packets through a Firewall.
I say Merry Christmas because it is the main celebration of the season. The Happy Holidays thing is just too PC for me. If there is a Jewish Holidays I say happy Jewish Holiday. And if I meet some black people doing Kwanza I say Happy Kwanza. When In Rome do as the Romans.
Happy Holidays long pre-dates PC. I can recall seeing in on cards and hearing it half a century ago, or more. I have always assumed that since the usual greeting used to be "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" that it simply got condensed into "Happy Holidays."
I think when secularization became more widespread, and other religions achieved a higher profile in the U.S. that the old "Happy Holidays" got some new interpretations.
I've been hearing "Happy Holidays" for so many decades that it is a total non-problem.
At my last job we always had a "holiday" party for the staff. Most of the staff were Jews, the rest Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and atheists. The nod to religion was in the food: there was a table of kosher food, and another larger table of non-kosher.
No the issue for me is that some "Christians" have a holy cow when you say happy holidays instead of merry christmas. I celebrate christamas without any of the religious trappings. I had me tree up on Thanksgiving. I say happy holidays and merry christmas depending on which pops into my mind first. Why should I be intimidated to say merry christmas to people from Thanksgiving until christmas day? The entire month of December, and half of November, is not christmas. It is the holiday season. And I honestly, don't know anyone that doesn't celebrate christmas, most of us just don't do the religious parts.
Thank you, JJ.
And Season's Greetings!
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j/k Happy whatever you celebrate, Jay!!
