Happy Holidays
Before we completely forget 2016, I want to weigh in on one of the year's most virulent controversies: whether to say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" to random strangers during the late fall and early winter.
Okay, so the "Happy Holidays" season is pretty much over for the majority of Americans at this point. But that's actually not quite fair.
There are still a few of the "twelve days of Christmas" left for those few Christians who celebrate the entire Christmas liturgical season, ending in Twelfth Night and the day of Epiphany. Eastern Orthodox Christians, such as a Russian colleague of mine, actually celebrate Christmas on the day other Christians celebrate Epiphany. And for some Latin American Christians, "Three Kings Day" gets a bigger celebration than Christmas anyway. Today is actually the last day of Hanukkah for Jews. And those of an East Asian culture have almost a month to go until their big winter holiday, the Lunar New Year.
And that unfairness is really part of the point.
For the vast majority of Americans, it seems that "Happy Holidays" is just a polite veneer over "Merry Christmas," a way to wish those random strangers we are all surrounded with a happy pre-Christmas season without presuming any particular stranger's Christian-ness. This seems to be true even among secular Americans: the day after Dec 25th, "Happy Holidays" goes away, even though plenty of Americans still have a major winter holiday going on or coming up.
The pattern of polite American holiday greetings seems to be: in late October, wish people a Happy Halloween. In late November, wish people a Happy Thanksgiving. From Dec 26th through early January, wish people a Happy New Year. But from Black Friday up until Dec 25th, you are supposed to wish people -- what?
How about "have a nice day"? Can't we just recognize that American doesn't have a big secular national holiday in December? No? Well, then...
Some people like to at least pretend at inclusivity by disguising their pre-Christmas greeting as "Happy Holidays." And I will admit that it feels nice, if you aren't Christian or secular-Christian, to have someone wish you a happy-whatever-holiday-you-are-celelbrating-this-time-of-year. It also feels a tad artificial, when (as happened to Jews in 2015) your holiday is far enough removed from Christmas that it may already be over-and-done-with and somebody is still wishing you a "Happy Holiday." Which holiday would that be now? I'm sure I can think of one...
Other people are increasingly wanting to take the veneer of politeness off and just recognize that a wish for "Happy Holidays" is really a wish for "Merry Christmas" in disguise. Why disguise it? Why not just wish a person Merry Christmas and risk offending the one percent or so of Americans who don't celebrate the Christian holiday or its secular equivalents? I have to say that, in a way, I find this the more intellectually honest approach. If Christmas is the only holiday this time of year that you can manage to keep track of, then go ahead and wish every Jew you meet a Merry Christmas. Why would we be offended? You are wishing us a happy day. It just happens to be a day we don't celebrate, a day that for any with memories of anti-Semitic Old Countries may have been a traumatic experience, a day that for others means simply feeling left out of the surrounding culture for a little while. But why would anyone wishing us merriment on that day be offensive? As long as you don't mind us wishing you a Happy Hanukkah or a Chag Sameach right back, then don't sweat it.
But Happy Hanukkah does bother you, you say? That's not a holiday you celebrate, you say? Then we need to have a talk about living in a multicultural world. Or have a talk with Jewish sage Hillel: that which is hateful to you, don't do to anyone else. If you don't want to have some other holiday foisted on you, then don't foist your holiday on someone else.
Which brings us back to Happy Holidays. *sigh*
I want to share four experiences I've had this year with holiday greetings that stand out in my mind.
First, I checked out at our local grocery store, H-E-B, and noticed that they had bags this year that read "Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays". I thought this was a nice compromise. My teenage son said something like "Thanks for nothing, H-E-B".
A bit later in the month of December, I was checking out at the local Petco. The manager was busy showing off how proudly counter-culture he could be by loudly wishing each customer a "Merry Christmas". He wished me the same thing. Then he saw the kippah on the back of my head and hurriedly shot off "I mean, Happy Hanukah." For some reason, he then loudly tossed out (to a checkout line completely devoid of African Americans) "and Happy Kwanzaa while we're at it. Whatever holiday you celebrate!"
Sometime later still, the community college I worked for decided to rename its annual employee Christmas Party as a "Holiday Party" this year. I was almost kinda-sorta touched. Then a proudly conservative faculty member who shares an office cluster with me started loudly complaining to anyone who would listen about the name change. It seems we aren't allowed to call a spade a spade anymore, he said. Somebody must have complained, he said. When he stopped in my office and started complaining to a yarmulke-wearing Jew that he wasn't allowed to enjoy an exclusively Christmas themed party at a public institution of higher learning, I nearly lost it. He offered as proof of his position that he had seen a news article interviewing black people who don't actually celebrate Kwanzaa. When I assured him that Jews do still actually celebrate Hanukkah, he didn't seem to care.
For what it's worth, my department still called its annual party a Christmas Party and even had Christmas-themed word games on the tables, some of a mildly religious nature. I would have boycotted, but I had department business to discuss over lunch that day. My department also papered its office door with a "Chemist-tree" of various math and science tropes arranged as a Christmas tree. I responded with a phylogenetic tree-of-life menorah on my lab door. It can be fun to be a geek.
Finally, a bright spot: as my students left my classroom on Final Exam day, many of them wished me a Happy Hanukkah. I wished them a Merry Christmas right back. That was a touching moment.
So, where does that bring us?
I have a few suggestions.
If you are a public institution, representing or serving or including people of many faiths and cultural traditions, stick to Happy Holidays and Holiday Parties and the like. Or, alternatively, work on finding out what all of the various holidays that are celebrated by your employees and constituents are and make a big deal of wishing happiness and merriment for each and all of those holidays. Happy Holidays feels nice. Happy Hanukkah next to a list of other holiday greetings feels even nicer.
If you are a private institution serving customers who might just be something other than Christian, at least take the H-E-B approach and include Happy Holidays alongside your favored holiday greeting. It's just common courtesy to recognize that I exist and am valued as your customer even if I don't share your favored holiday. I would expect Jewish store owners to do the same (unless they own a Judaica shop), Chinese store owners to do the same, etc.
If you are a private Christmas-celelbrating citizen, try the following list of ideas:
First off, there is the hugely daunting option of actually talking to someone. Ask them "what holiday do you celebrate this time of year?" then wish them happiness for that holiday. Time-consuming, I know.
Okay, so the "Happy Holidays" season is pretty much over for the majority of Americans at this point. But that's actually not quite fair.
There are still a few of the "twelve days of Christmas" left for those few Christians who celebrate the entire Christmas liturgical season, ending in Twelfth Night and the day of Epiphany. Eastern Orthodox Christians, such as a Russian colleague of mine, actually celebrate Christmas on the day other Christians celebrate Epiphany. And for some Latin American Christians, "Three Kings Day" gets a bigger celebration than Christmas anyway. Today is actually the last day of Hanukkah for Jews. And those of an East Asian culture have almost a month to go until their big winter holiday, the Lunar New Year.
And that unfairness is really part of the point.
For the vast majority of Americans, it seems that "Happy Holidays" is just a polite veneer over "Merry Christmas," a way to wish those random strangers we are all surrounded with a happy pre-Christmas season without presuming any particular stranger's Christian-ness. This seems to be true even among secular Americans: the day after Dec 25th, "Happy Holidays" goes away, even though plenty of Americans still have a major winter holiday going on or coming up.
The pattern of polite American holiday greetings seems to be: in late October, wish people a Happy Halloween. In late November, wish people a Happy Thanksgiving. From Dec 26th through early January, wish people a Happy New Year. But from Black Friday up until Dec 25th, you are supposed to wish people -- what?
How about "have a nice day"? Can't we just recognize that American doesn't have a big secular national holiday in December? No? Well, then...
Some people like to at least pretend at inclusivity by disguising their pre-Christmas greeting as "Happy Holidays." And I will admit that it feels nice, if you aren't Christian or secular-Christian, to have someone wish you a happy-whatever-holiday-you-are-celelbrating-this-time-of-year. It also feels a tad artificial, when (as happened to Jews in 2015) your holiday is far enough removed from Christmas that it may already be over-and-done-with and somebody is still wishing you a "Happy Holiday." Which holiday would that be now? I'm sure I can think of one...
Other people are increasingly wanting to take the veneer of politeness off and just recognize that a wish for "Happy Holidays" is really a wish for "Merry Christmas" in disguise. Why disguise it? Why not just wish a person Merry Christmas and risk offending the one percent or so of Americans who don't celebrate the Christian holiday or its secular equivalents? I have to say that, in a way, I find this the more intellectually honest approach. If Christmas is the only holiday this time of year that you can manage to keep track of, then go ahead and wish every Jew you meet a Merry Christmas. Why would we be offended? You are wishing us a happy day. It just happens to be a day we don't celebrate, a day that for any with memories of anti-Semitic Old Countries may have been a traumatic experience, a day that for others means simply feeling left out of the surrounding culture for a little while. But why would anyone wishing us merriment on that day be offensive? As long as you don't mind us wishing you a Happy Hanukkah or a Chag Sameach right back, then don't sweat it.
But Happy Hanukkah does bother you, you say? That's not a holiday you celebrate, you say? Then we need to have a talk about living in a multicultural world. Or have a talk with Jewish sage Hillel: that which is hateful to you, don't do to anyone else. If you don't want to have some other holiday foisted on you, then don't foist your holiday on someone else.
Which brings us back to Happy Holidays. *sigh*
I want to share four experiences I've had this year with holiday greetings that stand out in my mind.
First, I checked out at our local grocery store, H-E-B, and noticed that they had bags this year that read "Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays". I thought this was a nice compromise. My teenage son said something like "Thanks for nothing, H-E-B".
A bit later in the month of December, I was checking out at the local Petco. The manager was busy showing off how proudly counter-culture he could be by loudly wishing each customer a "Merry Christmas". He wished me the same thing. Then he saw the kippah on the back of my head and hurriedly shot off "I mean, Happy Hanukah." For some reason, he then loudly tossed out (to a checkout line completely devoid of African Americans) "and Happy Kwanzaa while we're at it. Whatever holiday you celebrate!"
Sometime later still, the community college I worked for decided to rename its annual employee Christmas Party as a "Holiday Party" this year. I was almost kinda-sorta touched. Then a proudly conservative faculty member who shares an office cluster with me started loudly complaining to anyone who would listen about the name change. It seems we aren't allowed to call a spade a spade anymore, he said. Somebody must have complained, he said. When he stopped in my office and started complaining to a yarmulke-wearing Jew that he wasn't allowed to enjoy an exclusively Christmas themed party at a public institution of higher learning, I nearly lost it. He offered as proof of his position that he had seen a news article interviewing black people who don't actually celebrate Kwanzaa. When I assured him that Jews do still actually celebrate Hanukkah, he didn't seem to care.
For what it's worth, my department still called its annual party a Christmas Party and even had Christmas-themed word games on the tables, some of a mildly religious nature. I would have boycotted, but I had department business to discuss over lunch that day. My department also papered its office door with a "Chemist-tree" of various math and science tropes arranged as a Christmas tree. I responded with a phylogenetic tree-of-life menorah on my lab door. It can be fun to be a geek.
Finally, a bright spot: as my students left my classroom on Final Exam day, many of them wished me a Happy Hanukkah. I wished them a Merry Christmas right back. That was a touching moment.
So, where does that bring us?
I have a few suggestions.
If you are a public institution, representing or serving or including people of many faiths and cultural traditions, stick to Happy Holidays and Holiday Parties and the like. Or, alternatively, work on finding out what all of the various holidays that are celebrated by your employees and constituents are and make a big deal of wishing happiness and merriment for each and all of those holidays. Happy Holidays feels nice. Happy Hanukkah next to a list of other holiday greetings feels even nicer.
If you are a private institution serving customers who might just be something other than Christian, at least take the H-E-B approach and include Happy Holidays alongside your favored holiday greeting. It's just common courtesy to recognize that I exist and am valued as your customer even if I don't share your favored holiday. I would expect Jewish store owners to do the same (unless they own a Judaica shop), Chinese store owners to do the same, etc.
If you are a private Christmas-celelbrating citizen, try the following list of ideas:
First off, there is the hugely daunting option of actually talking to someone. Ask them "what holiday do you celebrate this time of year?" then wish them happiness for that holiday. Time-consuming, I know.
Second, I offer with is multi-step method:
1. If the person in front of you is obviously Christian in some way, go ahead and wish a Merry Christmas
2. If the person in front of you is obviously Jewish or Muslim or something else, look up when Hanukkah is this year and wish a Happy Hanukkah if that makes sense, look up whether there is a Muslim holiday this winter and wish an Eid Mubarak if that makes sense, wish a Happy Solstice if the person seems new-age-y or wiccan or something, etc...
3. If you can't tell, say "Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays" and wait for the person to wish you a happy holiday back and don't be any more offended than they were.
Third, if the above options just seem like too much work, try wishing everybody a "happy holiday season and a nice day" and let it go at that.
After all, being wished happiness never upset anybody, did it?
1. If the person in front of you is obviously Christian in some way, go ahead and wish a Merry Christmas
2. If the person in front of you is obviously Jewish or Muslim or something else, look up when Hanukkah is this year and wish a Happy Hanukkah if that makes sense, look up whether there is a Muslim holiday this winter and wish an Eid Mubarak if that makes sense, wish a Happy Solstice if the person seems new-age-y or wiccan or something, etc...
3. If you can't tell, say "Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays" and wait for the person to wish you a happy holiday back and don't be any more offended than they were.
Third, if the above options just seem like too much work, try wishing everybody a "happy holiday season and a nice day" and let it go at that.
After all, being wished happiness never upset anybody, did it?
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