10 December, 2006

Happy holidays vs merry Christmas.

This year the common sense seems to finally sink into people's minds and there's much less talk about "controversy" of either variant of the greeting. It's interesting to note how media can create these controversies out of nothing: "happy holidays" or "merry Christmas", dump unused cell down the drain or use them for research, let people manage their behinds as they see fit or not -- a search for "controversy" on Google news will yield you a million of those.
People eagerly discuss this stuff, as if it is really important and not glaringly obvious, while really important issues are virtually not covered, like, er... are we really ruining the ecosystem or not? It is, I think, quite important and worth discussing by reasonable beings because, you know, the answer means whether our children will have to live in a frigging bunker or will there be some green fields left. Yet somehow people seriously discuss if it's OK to say "merry Christmas" on Christmas Day, or it should be replaced by an obscure "happy holidays", as in "happy Christmas, Winter Solstice, or whatever-you-celebrate-today."

But I digress.
I was growing up celebrating the New Year only, later learning that in other places of the world people have greater emphasis on Christmas, which, in turn, falls on December 25th in some countries, and on January 7th in others. The New Year is, however, celebrated in most and on the same date, so when I first saw on of those "happy holidays" signs I have naturally assumed the idea was to congratulate people with both Christmas and the New Year. "How neat", I thought, "One sign good for two holidays. Very reasonable!".
Boy, how I was wrong! ;)

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