Is there any such thing as a bad holiday greeting?
by Mauve Maude
December 21, 2020
We’ve never had holidays quite like these before, and I imagine next year’s will be quite different. Living with a deadly pandemic for a year, I think has given us a lot of perspective, even if we don’t know it yet. And I’m hoping there are some negative social aspects we can leave in 2020, or 2019. Today, holiday greeting wars come to mind.
It used to be that “Merry Christmas” and perhaps a “Happy New Year” were the standard American holiday greetings. I think plenty would argue they still are. But when I was growing up, that’s mostly what we heard. It’s not that people never said “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings”. It’s certainly not that other religions didn’t exist. And it’s not even that Christians or secular Christmas celebrants didn’t realize other holidays were occurring at the end of the year. After all, most of these traditions are older than we are. It was just considered a norm, and perhaps not much consideration was given to anything lying outside of it.
In more recent years though, in the (holiday) spirit of inclusion, extending holiday greetings to all people celebrating holidays has become a more common social practice. I personally feel that celebrating a holiday isn’t even a requirement for wishing somebody good will during the holiday season, or any other time. But of course, as with anything else involving deliberate inclusion, everybody’s good intentions have been lost in misinterpretation.
Somewhere in our history, some decided that over-acknowledging Christmas diminishes and marginalizes entire cultures of non-Christians, and others decided acknowledging other holidays at all is a “war” on Christmas. And for years, Americans on the far ends and in between have literally debated on the proper ways to greet each other during the holiday season, even going so far as to debate how coffee cups greet us too. This History Channel article backs up a bit to explore when and why, exactly, all these extra greetings became a thing (spoiler: it was not during the Clinton or the Obama administration; go back farther). And now, here we all are.
Somewhere in our history, some decided that over-acknowledging Christmas diminishes entire cultures of non-Christians, and others decided acknowledging other holidays at all is a “war” on Christmas.
So now we’re presented with some potentially confusing and awkward options on how to speak to one another during times of festivity. Since we don’t generally hear complaints of Jewish people “forcing” Hanukkah on Christians, or people of the African diaspora shoving Kwanzaa down people’s throats, I’ll present these options from the standpoint of a society that dominantly embraces the Christian holiday (and the Pagan traditions that, as much as people hate to hear it, were adopted into the Christian holiday, for all the things we now recognize as Christmas). And realistically, it’s hard to deny that’s where we are. Christmas dominates everything this time of year, from school calendars to our physical environments, right down to the very social expectations we’re talking about. Even if you’re not Christian or even religious, you’re in it. And the Christmas season alone is almost ten percent of our year. So what can Americans do? Well . . .
In greeting, we can just assume everybody’s Christian, until we’re told otherwise.
We can just assume everybody should be Christian or kowtow to Christians, even when we are told otherwise.
We can just say “Merry Christmas” because it is the overhelmingly dominant holiday.
We can try to guess or assume what other people’s religious traditions are and wish them well for the holidays we think they celebrate.
We can ask them what, if anything, they celebrate.
We can use our personal knowledge of them, or what we see happening right in front of us, to inform us.
We can use generic, catch-all greetings that supposedly include everybody.
Or we can just Scrooge it, try to ignore it all, and sit out entirely until New Year’s.
In responding, we can correct people who mis-greet us, by stating what we celebrate.
We can get annoyed or offended and upset, and make them feel bad for greeting us at all.
We can expect everybody to get it right for everybody, including armies of shoppers and all of the public-facing corporate employees who encounter them in overwhelming numbers, mainly just trying to make a living, and who in fact are individual people, not logos for the corporations they work for.
We can say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” back.
Or we can just Scrooge it, try to ignore it all, and sit out entirely until New Year’s? See how uncomfortable this can get?
So what if it wasn’t Christmas season? What if it was a beautiful summer’s day, and somebody just told you to have a nice day, in a genuinely engaged kind of way? Would you get mad at them because you’re not having a nice day so far, or because you’re depressed, or because anything bad happened to you that day or that week? Maybe you would. But generally, when we can tell somebody’s genuinely extending us good wishes, we recognize them for what they are, and might wish them good in return. A lack of authenticity is what it is, and will probably be matched as well. But true kindness should be met with kindness. And we’re in control of ourselves only.
Generally, when we can tell somebody’s genuinely extending us good wishes, we recognize them for what they are, and might wish them good in return.
Why should it be different during the holiday season?
Some history: I worked in retail and restaurant jobs before college, all through college, and for years after. And I still shop, even this year. I have been the giver and the recipient of thousands and thousands of different kinds of holiday greetings. I’ve tried a lot of different approaches, and I’ve had a lot of people try theirs out on me. The most important thing I’ve found is that you can tell when a greeting is authentic or not. It’s just like you notice when somebody says, “Hi, how are you?” and either does or doesn’t wait for your answer. You can tell the difference between somebody who really cares and somebody who really doesn’t. And then you get to decide how to respond. Here’s what I finally decided about holidays. If someone is wishing me something authentic, it doesn’t really matter otherwise where they’re coming from or where I am.
If a person wishes me a Merry Christmas, first of all, can I even assume where they’re coming from? If I don’t know them, I don’t know if they’re Christian or Jewish or Buddhist or agnostic, kind or unkind. So can I accurately make a judgment about their intentions? Not really. I’m not a Christian, but I frequently initiate Christmas wishes during the holiday season. If anybody ever came back with, “I’m not Christian!”, I’d say, “Neither am I.” But nobody ever has, because people can tell if I’m being authentic or not, and I can too. So if someone’s genuinely wishing me a Merry Christmas, can’t I just try to have one, regardless of my beliefs? It may not be a holy day for me, but it’s still a day, and I’m there, and they’re wishing me merriment for the day or for the whole season. Do I need anything else? If they’re not being authentic, the chances that they’re trying to outright offend me are pretty low, but I can choose to be inauthentic in return, or raise the bar to my own authenticity.
Either way, do I need them to fully recognize who I am in all my human glory at that particular moment? Should they only wish me a nice day if I’m Christian; should that be a requirement? Am I less me if they do or don’t? Has my entire being and culture been reduced because they wished me a Merry Christmas? Is that what this is about? No. I live in America, I know who I am, and I know other people are who they are. They basically just wished me a happy day because they’re happy. At least I hope they are.
If I tell somebody “Happy Holidays” . . . Okay, I typically don’t, because to me it just doesn’t feel authentic in most situations, and in that way, I can almost see why it ruffles some people’s feathers. I think it’s fine and inclusive when it’s on display for everybody in town, or in the mall, or in a Unitarian church, but in speech or even on a card it sounds impersonal. You don’t address one person as everybody if you want to convey anything special. In greeting somebody one on one, it feels at least a little more personal to say “Have a great holiday!”, which I’ll say for any holiday any time of year. But if I tell somebody “Have a great holiday!” and they respond with “Merry Christmas”, again, I can tell if it’s authentic. If they’re making a pointed, political effort to try to correct me for leaving Christ out of it, they’re not really wishing me merriment, and I can see that. If they genuinely are, what else do I need?
The most important thing I’ve found is that you can tell when a greeting is authentic or not.
The way I’ve learned to see it is, even when it’s said to me, it’s not about me. It’s not about them either, if they mean it. It’s about all the things you hear about during the entire holiday season, which are not confined to one religion: love, peace, generosity, humility, and joy. And if somebody does come up to me and says “Happy Hanukkah!”, “Joyous Kwanzaa!”, or “Merry Saturnalia!”, I’m just gonna say it back. It rarely happens, after all, and is kind of a treat.
So maybe, in the festive lights of the holiday season, we could all resist the urge to go to war over superficial greetings, and instead try to just be there for other people in a deeper, more genuine way. Whether you believe the entire season is all about Christ, all about joy, or all about giving, it’s definitely not all about us. Maybe we’d all find that ten percent of our lives more enjoyable if we could remember that, just for a short time.
If not, what can I say? There’s always New Year’s.
What do you think? We would like to hear from you, but you won’t find the typical Comments section here. If you have given the issue some thought or have an experience to share, please enter it here, or send your response to Maude@mauvereport.com. We would like to share viewpoints from all sides.