Why "Season's Greetings!" Makes Me Cringe

It’s that time of year again.  You know, the “Holiday Season” when it seems that half the world insists on complaining about “The War of Christmas” and the other half insists on pretending to respect everybody else’s holiday traditions.  After all, not everybody believes in Christmas.  But really, they’re only kidding themselves. The word “holiday” has come to mean only one thing, and that is Christmas.   Do people say “Have a happy holiday” around Easter time or any other holiday?  No, they say “Happy Easter” or “Happy Halloween” or “Happy Fourth of July.”  

December 25^th is Christmas all around the world, whether people use the Julian calendar or the Gregorian.  But in the southern hemisphere, December is a time for going to the beach, not for dreaming of a white Christmas or listening to hear sleigh bells in the snow or rejoicing that the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, has passed.   Christians (and the ancient Romans who pretty much quit celebrating Saturnalia nearly two thousand years ago) are the only people who have a major holiday at the end of December every year.  People may believe they’re demonstrating more sensitivity toward their non-Christian friends and neighbors if they say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” but all they’re demonstrating, at best, is naiveté.  If they know anything about other religions, or if they care a figgy pudding to learn, then they’ll know Ramadan is a movable feast, falling in July or June or thereabouts for the next several years, and the biggest Jewish holiday season, the one that lasts nearly a month, usually begins on the first full moon after the school year begins (in September or perhaps October).  For this year and the next couple of years, both Diwali and the minor Jewish holiday of Hanukkah are already over before Christian people’s “happy holidays” greetings hit in full force. 

I have faced the frustration of trying to buy new dresses for myself or my children to wear on the Jewish High Holidays, only to discover that all they have in the stock are totally inappropriate evening gowns or skimpy little summer dresses on close-out.  When I ask store clerks where to find what I want, they tell me, “Oh, we won’t get anything like that in until ‘The Holiday!’”  “Yes,” I want to tell them, “the holiday is next week, and that’s why I’m shopping for holiday dresses today and not three months from now.”

I hate to sound like an Ebenezer Scrooge, but I wish people would time their “Happy Holiday” greetings to coincide with actual holidays.  Of course most people who only see fit to wish others a happy holiday during the Christmas season are not being deliberately insensitive, but I don’t see the “You should celebrate your holidays when I celebrate my holidays” message as any improvement over the “You should celebrate the same holidays I celebrate” message.  It’s like saying “People should celebrate birthdays only when I have my birthday.”  If they want to share their enthusiasm for Christmas with me, I think it’s more honest to just come out and say so.