Happy Golden Days

There seems to be a lot—or at least my radar has picked up a higher volume than usual—of talk about the whole “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas.” The primary thrust of the debate seems to be the clear indication of the Judeo-Christian influence to the holiday on December 25th when saying “Merry Christmas” versus the more secular, greed-based variant of the event whose proponent seem to desire the excision of even the root word “Christ.”

What annoys me in a general sense is the idea of hijacking events for personal gain. Imagine for a moment that we, as general Americans, decided to start recognizing Chanukah in a manner similar to how we recognize Christmas—or, for that matter, let’s make it easier and compare it to Easter.

Chanukah is the Jewish festival that often occurs in December and is largely misunderstood by Gentiles. But what if we all decided that we wanted to have an eight-day celebration in December? Of course we don’t understand Hebrew, don’t really care about the Maccabees, the Temple or burning oil. So instead someone comes up with the idea that since this whole thing has something to do with candles, we’ll use Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast as our kid-friendly mascot. We’ll make up some fun songs and stories about how he comes down and lights the Menorah each night while the kids are sleeping and the songs will have names like “Eight Little Candles (Burning Bright)” and “Lumiere the Candlestick Man.”

Eventually most people will forget about the Menorah and only a few “old-fashioned” people will have real ones in their house during Chanukah while most people just have a lot of adorable stuffed Lumieres that dance and sing when you press a special button hidden in their plush little appendages. We can make up excuses to give people presents like you get one present from people for each of the eight days with the first one being something small and by the eighth day you’re getting new Lexus convertables and diamond necklaces that require their own security service to be within 50 yards at all times or the insurance company will default the policy. Festive Chanukah ads will run on TV where high-priced European auto manufacturers subtly chastise consumers, “Don’t get caught giving a Fourth Day gift on Day Eight! Buy a BMW for your loved ones today.”

Okay, so that was rather tangental, but you get my drift. The commercialization of Christmas annoys me and it only gets worse every year, not better. If you want to celebrate Christmas, maybe you should believe in what it represents. Otherwise it’s like Gentiles celebrating Chanukah or terrorists celebrating the Fourth of July. It doesn’t compute. Of course I could also make an argument that celebrating Christmas in a sincere fashion would preculde any tree/lights/presents hoo-ha, but if I did that, every female in the US would consider me Ebeneezer Grinch.

Of course, the actual phrase “Merry Christmas” is a little suspect, too. Not because of any religious overtone or agenda, but because of the actual linguistic execution. I mean, “Merry?” No one uses that word in any other context. You don’t say “Merry St. Patrick’s Day”; you don’t suggest that you’re feeling especially “merry” if you’re in a good mood; you don’t ask if someone might need “merrying up.”

That being said, I actually prefer the term “Happy Holidays” from an aesthetic perspective, but the people who use it as a political tool have ruined it. Another thing the “Happy Holidays” phrase has going for it is that, when not used to circumvent the religious overtones of Christmas, is actually more inclusive and covers New Year celebrations plus it could be a useful inspecific greeting should one not be quite sure whether someone celebrates Christmas, Chanukah, Kwaanza, Winter Solstice or Festivus or whatever.

So what is needed is a faith-inspecific greeting for people you don’t know well enough to determine if a Christmas-specific greeting is appropriate and an improved Christmas greeting for people who share that specific observance.

Here’s what I suggest: “Season’s Greetings” should replace “Happy Holidays” for all non-specific interactions. It has the added benefit of being familair but is vague enough that it could be applied specifically to whatever “season” requires greetings, be that Christmas or what have you. It isn’t specifically exclusive but is also not presumptive. As for Christmas-specific greetings, here’s the best I could come up with: “Christmas Cheer” or perhaps “Christmas Cheers.” It’s not great, but “cheer” is more common than the archaic “merry.” I’m open to suggestions on that one.

Second Time’s a Charm

So almost immediately after getting a new work cell phone, I switched jobs. Having to turn in that phone was disappointing because I had a sweet deal through work for that phone: Free hardware, $10/month mostly unrestricted personal usage. You simply can’t beat that going through the cell service providers yourself.

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