‘Happy Holidays’. The greeting is ubiquitous in the run up to Christmas these days. From some, it is a well meaning, if misled, intention to be inclusive. It isn’t clear who is wished to be included in the Christmas season that is not already there. From others however, it is a deliberate snub of the Christian tradition hidden behind this false veil of inclusion.
In fact, by not wishing someone a ‘Happy Christmas’ when it is Christmas, attempts at inclusion are exclusive and borderline insulting.
Taken to its logical conclusion, in order to be inclusive, every celebration of every kind should be reduced to this form of lowest common denominator. Eid-al- Adha and Eid-Al- Fitr, two of the largest Muslim celebrations should be met with greetings of Happy Holidays. Hanukkah? Happy Holidays. Diwali? Happy Holidays.
Every day of some particular importance is to be shorn of its meaning in order to be inclusive. Naturally, this does not happen across the globe. In Islamic countries, proper respect for the day that is in it, is expected. No one in their right mind expects everyone in India to ignore the particulars of their different ethnic or religious groups and reduce them to meaningless greetings. Multiculturalism involves tolerating difference rather than erasing it.
Globally, the various international days of celebration, relatively new creations under the United Nations, should be made generic if the logic of inclusion is to be followed. International Women’s Day? International Day. ‘Happy Day’ should be the greeting on the 8th of March. World Down Syndrome Day? World Day. ‘Happy Day’ World Autism Awareness Day? ‘Happy Day’ The day for being aware about everything. International Day of Families? Surely that one is exclusive? World No-Tobacco Day? What about the feelings of the poor smokers?
World Day Against Child Labour? What about a day against all labour? And then why have Labour Day?
As for the International Day for the World’s Indigenous People? Shouldn’t that be removed in order not to exclude the historical migrants that took over their lands? Or is that covered during International Migrants Day on the 18th of December?
What should be done with International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust?
Reductio ad absurdum.
So, why is there a feigned and promoted perception that celebrating Christmas is somehow not inclusive of non-Christians? This only happens in modern, so-called liberal democracies, which incidentally have created for themselves International Day for Democracy. What about the poor autocrats and dictators? Do they not deserve to feel included?
Maybe not. But maybe that is the point. The erasure of the content and meaning of the second most important Christian holiday is an aggressive secularising capture of the Christian identity.
It may be portrayed as benign, as being wrapped in the cotton wool of niceness, but for Christians who hold onto the meaning of the season, it is insulting just as it is insulting for the black lives matter slogan to be captured as ‘all lives matter’.
To take a holiday, a feast day, a celebration, and remove its authentic content, is an insult to those who hold the holiday dear. No one in Ireland expects the Muslim community to have ‘happy holidays’ pushed on their celebrations of Eid. No one in the their right mind expects to go to Sudan, Jordan, Afghanistan, Indonesia and have their non-Muslim-ness accommodated by these countries erasing the meaning and identity of their feast days and festivals.
Yet, it is not just expected here, it is often demanded. There are many who deliberately reply to Christmas greetings with the meaningless ‘Happy Holiday’ response, often to make a point and sometimes to signal their own virtue.
I read a meme recently (I think it was meme – I am not sure what these things are called) saying “If someone greets me with ‘Happy Holidays’ I just say ‘Same to you’ because I am a Christian, not a jerk.” I disagree. If you are a Christian and the holiday means something to you, then you respond back ‘Happy Christmas’ and demonstrate that the day has meaning for you. It is not being a jerk to say ‘Happy Christmas’. It is just not being a doormat.
The naked public square is never just that. Nature – and ideology- abhors a vacuum. With the removal of the Crib from many public spaces, and the various city and county councils decorating the streets with meaningless neon holiday signs, the physical square has already been captured and the ideological public square is not far behind.
The growing enforcement of identity neutral greetings taking over Christian holidays is unique to Christianity and its current retreat in the aggressive takeover by militant secularism in liberal democracies. Its growing and pushy usage of ‘Happy Holidays’ is an attempt not to be inclusive but to let Christians know, in not-so-subtle ways, that modern Ireland (and elsewhere) is embarrassed by its Christian heritage and identity. That our time has passed.
When An Post releases a series of Christmas stamps that bear little reflection of the meaning of the season, when the only Christmas cards you can find could be as easily used for someone’s first day at school, when you can hardly find a Crib outside a Church, you should get the message.
Take time to ask a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or Sikh if they are offended by the greeting ‘Happy Christmas’. I have yet to find a non-European/American foreigner in Ireland who is anyway insulted to be wished ‘Happy Christmas’. There is just one group who feel this way – and they are the ones who take pretend offence on behalf of others in the name of inclusion.
Whether they realise or not that their approach is especially and pointedly exclusive of the one group that has a deep, important, attachment to the original meaning of Christmas, only their consciences can answer that for them.
Dualta Roughneen