Happy Holidays

There’s no war against Christmas. It’s the most popular holiday in the history of holidays. And it doesn’t matter if you celebrate it for religious, secular, material, traditional, ironic, or other reasons. National holidays should be celebrations of inclusion rather than exclusion. So I like the fairly neutral slogan in the title. But I am likewise not offended to be offered a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Joyous Kwanzaa, or even a Happy Festivus. When someone wishes me a happy day (think, for a moment, what a genuinely good thing that is to say, when you really mean it), I try to take it in the spirit in which it was–or at least should be–intended. The intent of wishing anyone a happy day shouldn’t be to underscore that they’re not an official member of your tribe or an official subscriber to your creed. If your only goal in a holiday greeting is to impress everyone with your religious zeal, then I pity you, and I pity any religious sect which would be proud to have you as an exemplar. But for everyone out there, zealots included, I wish you a sincerely happy holiday.

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