Happy holidays, from one of those annoying social justice warriors offended by everything and determined to put an end to free speech.
This never quite jibed with my perception of self – I have thick skin and happen to be anti-censorship, though I do love that sweet, sweet justice – but I get accused of it all the time. It’s like when someone rages against ‘political correctness’, yet all that actually happened was someone was encouraged to be kinder. I live by the ethos of Maya Angelou – “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better” – but there are always those who remain glued to tradition like a kid’s tongue to a frozen fence post.
I say Happy Holidays at the checkout. I celebrate the season and the solstice, and I object to more than ten per cent of every single year being immersed in consumerism and crappy music. I say Happy Holidays not because I don’t celebrate Christmas, but because I can’t be sure the person on the receiving end does. I have no need to presume the belief system of a complete stranger, nor do I need to prescribe my own by using a narrow and specific greeting.
Having said that, I don’t tell people what they can and cannot say, and with exceedingly few exceptions, I truly believe that most people have only the loveliest intentions when wishing me a Merry Christmas. I have friends who are Christian and I’m grateful when they pray for me, because it means they are holding me in their heart and wishing me well, which is exactly what I do, by a different name, for my friends. I wouldn’t tell them not to bother or that their words are wasted, just like I wouldn’t ask them not to say Merry Christmas to me.
What I do ask, of everyone, is to consider the impact of a dominant religion with a history of violence and oppression being used as the default for each and every citizen. I think many people say and hear Christmas-related phrases without diving deeply into the implications, but I suppose that’s why I’m here: to ask people to delve into the depths of the things we say, do, and think, consciously or otherwise. I still get taken aback that we are approaching the year 2020 and haven’t earnestly attempted to adopt inclusivity when it comes to language and celebrations.
According to a 2011 survey, 24 per cent of Canadians declare no religious affiliation. This number is pretty statistically significant and it means that a good chunk of the people we greet don’t share the same religion associated with the greeting. Given this number, what I find affronting isn’t merely being wished a Merry Christmas – it’s when people object to my saying ‘Happy Holidays’. Even more confounding is when I start with my greeting and the responding ‘Merry Christmas’ feels like less of a wish and more of a correction. I’m not trying to erase anything – I’m making space.
I would have even less issue with this if it were just about a greeting, or a prevailing attitude, but it’s not. It’s our ever-present reality. Every other song on the radio mentions Christmas, it’s hard to find a holiday card that doesn’t allude to traditional Christmas trappings, and for more than a month people get swept up in shopping, party planning, and various seasonal panics and anxieties. If anything could be described as unavoidable, it’s Christmas. It’s what happens when you combine capitalism and religion – less about giving and more about buying.
I appreciate the backlash I’m seeing against this – families adopting a no-gift Christmas because of the pressure to get the perfect gift, the acknowledgement that our addiction to stuff is destroying the planet, and the awareness that the best part of any holiday is connection with our loved ones. But I wish we’d never had to get to a place of backlash, that we’d maintained a steadfast dedication to togetherness and generosity. That’s a Christmas tradition I might have been able to get on board with.
But in a lot of ways, that’s not what we have. We have engineered outrage about the ‘war against Christmas’, rolled out on conservative or religious media year after year, with no space for real conversation. We have bad faith arguments that claim people are being ‘forced’ to give up their religious beliefs or that there’s no longer any space for Christmas in this new, inclusive world. Ironic, when you consider the historical uses of force that Christians have used to suppress other religions. A little bit of a reversal, I’d say – which is something that every dominant system uses, from patriarchy to white supremacy.
When you’re used to being the default, it becomes the air you breathe. You don’t notice it until someone comes along and starts to take away your oxygen. Except in this case, your oxygen levels remain perfectly safe, it’s just that you’re being asked to acknowledge that other people breathe this air too, so if we could just share… It was never okay that irreligion and non-Abrahamic religions were suppressed, stolen from, and practitioners punished. Therefore, asking for the cultural atmosphere to be more inclusive is just creating what should have always been. It is righting a wrong.
If we’re going to be gathering around the table and partaking of a feast this holiday, I only offer these words as food for thought. It doesn’t bother me when people wish me a Merry Christmas, but it does get to me when it’s a completely unexamined ritual. I strive to live very consciously, and I get challenged on language and appropriation from time to time, which I accept with the full knowledge that I am always learning and growing and seeing things from a perspective other than my own. The holiday season is hard enough – if I know that my attempts at inclusivity have made even one person’s holiday season more bearable, I’ll sleep soundly. Maybe even with visions of sugar plums. Or maybe not.
Don’t miss out on Doppler!
Sign up here to receive our email digest with links to all of our stories.
Local news in your inbox three times per week!
![Kathleen May (Photo: Kai Rannik)](https://media-doppleronline-ca.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2019/02/20180521_122413-e1549502286516.jpeg)
Kathleen May is a writer, speaker, and activist. Her work in our community includes co-founding the long-running Huntsville Women’s Group, being a Survivor Mentor in the pilot survivor-to-survivor program through MPSSAS, co-facilitating instinct-unlocking workshops for women through I Got This, working as a host and community producer of Herstories on YourTV, volunteering with Women’s March Muskoka, and her role as a front-line counsellor at a women’s shelter. Kathleen is a 2018 Woman of Distinction for Social Activism and Community Development and also received the Best Author award for her 2018 submission at the Muskoka Novel Marathon, a fundraiser for literacy services. Her dream is a sustainable women’s land co-operative in Muskoka.
Nancy Osborne says
Fantastic article Kathleen! As a fellow seasonal “snowflake”, I don’t take any offence when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas and I am also happy when someone wishes me Happy Holidays, after all there are many holiday traditions celebrated this time of year and when was there ever anything wrong with multiple celebrations?
I am never offended and indeed feel quite the opposite when Muslim friends wish me Eid Mubarak and I have never known a single one of them who expressed anything but appreciation if I wished them Merry Christmas. Sharing good will, kindness and blessings with the ones we love seems like a good thing to me.
We have an annual tree decorating party during the “season”. The first year that we invited some Jewish friends, they immediately accepted and then asked, you do know we are Jewish, right? I said yes and they have been attending for the many many years since to join in our celebration.
So for those who are offended by Happy Holidays, well, you really are missing out on a lot of good will and potential joy.
Waldi Frankiewicz says
It somehow happened that every year at about this time of the year it is appropriate to make wishes. In principle, it would be appropriate to wish them to all those you know or meet these days. Seemingly, it is easiest to wish wishes to those who are closest to us, those we like the most, those who are important to us. But for us important people it is not appropriate to wish “Merry Christmas” in a casual way, send a short text message from the Internet template or the first better card from the Internet service. For several years now he has been trying to fight against the trivialization and desecration of these wonderful holidays, writing to you his long “catechesis” and hoping that they will not fall into complete oblivion and will allow you (and me) to carry more out of Christmas.
I recently wondered whether a real celebration is possible in times when Christmas was drowned out by the celebration of Santa Claus and Christmas tree (I deliberately write Santa Claus, not the day of Santa Claus, because Santa Claus has little to do with holiness, and also was changed into thousands of Santa Clauses, which means people who seasonally practice this profession).
Is it still possible to have Christmas when many people blatantly claim that it is only a date in the calendar, set quite arbitrarily by the Church, not fully justified by the New Testament? Does it make sense to celebrate an event that for many people is just a fact from an ancient history, impossible to accurately reproduce and verify? Can Christmas really be Christmas, when it was turned into a gigantic fair with shining lights, delicacies and the sound of carols in the most kitschy performances? How do you find Christmas when the surroundings around it have already obscured its essence hundreds of years ago?
Well, if you think deeply about all of this, the whole fuss makes sense. All these customs, rituals, placing Christmas under a specific date – all this was supposed to serve something important. It was supposed to help us properly adjust our inept senses, tame them with something beyond mere understanding, synchronize our minds with the “holy time”. Of course, man has this in common with himself, that it is much easier to follow this more assimilable to the senses environment, hence we lose the essence of Christmas so easily – this applies not only to Christmas.
My dears, I believe that Christmas is primarily a state of mind. A strange state, because it consists in a conscious, voluntary maximum switching of this mind to a state close to zero – exactly enough to still be aware of one’s own humanity, but nothing more. When we silence our minds, we allow what is beyond our minds to come to the fore – like in the adorable song “What is inconceivable for the senses, let faith in us complete”. When this is completed, we will first hear the quiet singing of the carols carried by the villages and towns, the ringing of the bells, the laughter of the children, the tears of the loved ones who, perhaps many years later, met at the Christmas table. But this is not the level yet, we have to keep it down more – then we will hear the whispers of the most sincere good wishes and the crack of a broken wafer, the silent prayer of a lonely old man whom nobody visited on Christmas Day, the cry of hungry children who have never known Christmas and the distant echo of a typhoon which, like a malicious demon, ravages some distant land on Christmas Eve. If we hear this, it means that our mind is still “too loud”, we have to turn it down even more. As I mentioned before, almost to zero. Then at first we think that we can’t hear anything. But if we keep this state of mind for some time, we can hear how the Heaven meets the Earth, how stars shine, how the celestial spheres rotate more and more slowly, until they finally stand. Time has stopped. God is born. Infinite, omnipotent and at the same time defenseless – in our hearts.
And then we can let it all come back slowly. We will hear the voice of the angelic choirs, we will see the piercing light. Time will begin to flow again. Planets and galaxies will resume their eternal movement.
But our world will be changed…
How many times have we managed to survive a Christmas like this? Has it ever happened? If not, maybe this year, maybe it will finally work out. Without all that we will do at this time, it will not be Christmas, but at most its ritual, the satisfaction of tradition, a more or less successful Cepelia (Flee Market), to please our senses and to secure a sense of a well fulfilled duty. Without this, even noble gestures of mercy will only be a way of ensuring the peace of our consciences. And yet we can have more and thus give more….
This is what I wish you and myself on the occasion of Christmas A.D. 2019, so that we can all experience this state of mind. Then God will be able to be born every day, regardless of the date in the calendar, from documented historical facts, despite the rumble of bombs and lamentation of creation, covered with Christmas decorations, covered with cribs and piles of Christmas gifts, and even drowned in the noise of everyday life. God being Love, born of Love and carrying Love to the world. May every day be born
Merry Christmas
Rob Millman says
Thanks for your ever-thoughtful essay, Kathleen. I unconsciously follow your practice by wishing folk “Compliments of the season”. I’m very happy that you have not descended to the habit of using “Merry Xmas” or sending cards with the same message. The last time I checked, Canada still had freedom of religion; and such a message is sacrilegious to many.
I always enjoy the Christmas meal most: We try to invite those who may be alone to share in the celebration.
And a personal note: Where can one find a vigil for the victims of the Ecole Polytechnique shootings (including Marc Lepine)? How quickly we forget.
Susan Saulnier says
Nicely said ! It’s the wishes that are meant, why dwell on the words said !