Sacha: “What is the mystery here? Are companies afraid that there is going to be this huge backlash of angry people storming the walls if you mention "Christmas" anywhere? Are they seriously afraid that they'll lose business? Are politicians afraid they'll lose votes by mentioning the C-word? I'm not at all religious and I don't find anything wrong with it, but apparently somebody out there does. I think it's pretty messed up - it should be obvious to everybody in Canada and the USA that at this time of year we're celebrating Christmas. The meaning can vary, but the name shouldn't.”
Sacha misses the conservative and capitalist angle of using the phrase "happy holidays". Calling the season by what it has become is perfectly appropriate, just as it's appropriate to to call the people who deliver mail "letter carriers" (because that's what they do) and the people who put out blazing houses "firefighters" (ditto). "Holidays", as a plural noun, is a perfectly acceptable generic term which includes those who celebrate Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Festivus. Yup, the one from Seinfeld. I've been to two Festivus parties already. So "happy holidays" is not ridiculous, as Sacha would like you to believe. Ridiculous would be saying "happy end-of-Gregorian-calendar-year days off work", or calling the season "Giftmas", or putting up a poll, airing grievances, and engaging in Feats of Strength. (Oh wait, that's Festivus. No, Festivus is cool.) On a ridiculousness scale of 1 to 10, "holiday Tree" is at worst a 7, and besides, it got ridiculous long before they called them that, i.e. when the trees people bought were fake and plastic.
Companies aren't afraid that people will be storming the walls if things have "Christmas" on the product label. They just want to sell stuff to people who find the if idea of a birth of a boy to a virgin woman a little hard to believe.
