To meet me now - a 38 year old transgender father, home educator, curriculum creator, semi-professional writer, cat dude - it might not occur to you that I was once a huge lover of boybands. You’d be forgiven for assuming that I was a cool alterna-teen (I wasn’t) or even a bit butch (I REALLY wasn’t). I promise this is going somewhere. At age 14 I was utterly and completely obsessed with *NSYNC (yes you are supposed to spell it with the astrix thank you I know what I’m doing!) and of course, they had that Christmas album, with my spouse and child’s least favorite song that I still love to make them listen to once a year, Merry Christmas Happy Holidays.
To my fourteen year old ears, it sounded so inclusive! Even though the album also features religious Christmas songs (a stunning acapella version of O Holy Night, if you haven’t heard it) and Under My Tree, a song about literally fucking under a Christmas tree for some reason, the fact that they tacked on a “Happy Holidays!” was so good of them. And they have that bit in the bridge: No matter what your holiday/ it’s a time to celebrate/ so put your worries aside/ and open up your mind/ see the world right by your side/ it’s Christmas time. See? Inclusive! No matter what your holiday! Never mind that not everyone’s major holidays are in December and that the last line still proclaims the dominance of Christmas. It’s worth mentioning that when I was still pretty young my parents moved to a very white bread suburb, I first knowingly met a Jewish person at age 18.
The point is that the phrase “Happy Holidays” can be used in many different ways. There is a type of Christian who assumes that if they hear the phrase “Happy Holidays” it is someone being “politically correct” or “afraid to even say Christmas!” There is an assumption that “you can’t even say Christmas anymore!”
Many of us have, for years, been somewhat baffled by this willful ignorance. Obviously you can still say Christmas? Christmas is still everyone in these United States, it still reigns supreme like the one ring over the other December holidays! (yes we are still deep in LOTR, thanks for asking) When I say “Happy Holidays!” I am merely mentioning that there are quite a few different holidays and that I do not know what holidays the recipient may celebrate. It includes Christmas but not only Christmas. It’s a more inclusive, though imperfect greeting.
Yet, there is a second usage of “Happy Holidays!” that is less inclusive and serves to annoy both non-Christians and those who are afraid of a “war on Christmas” alike. A good friend of mine complains about this every year. It’s saying “Happy Holidays” when you actually really are in fact just talking about exclusively Christmas.
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Saying “Happy Holidays” when you would have otherwise said “Merry Christmas” can be any easy way to be more inclusive. But inclusivity is, unfortunately, not always easy. It may take a person effort to know when the other holidays take place. This is why I advise people to not take what I think of as the *NSYNC approach. Chanukah’s been over for a bit, for example. And no Islamic holy days that I’m aware took place in December of 2023.
Why am I talking about this? Well, the other day, I had an interesting interaction with a social media manager for a small curriclum company. You may be aware that the world of home education in the United States leans conservative and Christian overall. And even though I tend to follow secular creators, I was still inundated with Christmas crap. It was all “this Christmas, give your kids the gift of education, buy our curriculum!” type stuff from every angle. And while some promotional messaging did substitute “holidays” or “holiday” for “Christmas,” it was so clearly just that. A substitution.
So when I saw a post that was literally about the phrase “Happy Holidays” on December 26th that started with “I know Christmas is over but…” and continued to address the reader as if Christmas was obviously the only holiday they would care about… I mean for crying out loud “happy holidays” is plural! I kind of flipped out. I left a comment. I said I was dissapointed.
And I got a response. I didn’t get screenshots and I actually don’t want to put this company on blast, but essentially the response I got was all defensiveness. I was told that I was intolerant, among other things.
But here’s the funny thing that happened. The social media person who responded in a huff to my comment? She and I talked. It turns out that she celebrates Christmas but had been feeling pressure (I’m not sure from where) to make all of the companies social media posts “generic and about the holidays.” Now, the posts were all obviously about Christmas! She was doing the *NSYNC version of inclusion. But she was working really hard at it, and feeling kind of sad that she didn’t feel like she could even mention her own special holiday (Christmas).
So when she got my comment, she was like “I work so hard and people are still mad at me!”
Here is the thing.
If we listen to narratives about inclusion from only dominant culture, we get at best an incomplete view. We hear “you can’t say x anymore, you can only say y!”
But when we listen to a diversity of perspectives we get a lot more. I’d rather you say “Christmas” when you mean “Christmas!” But it’s nice if you also acknowledge other holidays too, you know? A more inclusive approach isn’t to brand all your Christmas content with “Happy Holidays,” it’s to mention Chanukah, and Kwanzaa, and the Winter Solstice.
Christmas may be over (for the majority, some Christians celebrate later) but the holiday season isn’t. And the lesson that inclusivity is more than just replacing one word or phrase with another is a good one for the whole year.