Is it better to wish people “happy holidays” or “merry Christmas” during the holiday season?
Holiday greetings are a selection of greetings that are often spoken with good intentions to strangers, family, friends, or other people during the months of December and January. Holidays with greetings include Christmas, New Year’s Day, Chinese New Year, Thanksgiving (United States), and Hanukkah. Some greetings are more prevalent than others, depending on the cultural and religious status of any given area. Typically, a greeting consists of the word “Happy” followed by the holiday, such as “Happy Hanukkah” or “Happy New Year”, although the phrase “Merry Christmas” is a notable exception. In the United States, the collective phrase “Happy Holidays” is often used as a simple way to refer to all of its winter holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. Some controversy has arisen regarding the phrase “Happy Holidays” as an alleged attempt to diminish Christmas although its use promotes other holidays commonly celebrated in the United States. * As “Merry Christmas”, the t
Retail stores are bustling with Christmas shoppers now. Christmas giving is traditional because it is based on the biblical Christmas stories. First there is the story of God’s gift to the world — our Savior, Jesus Christ. Then comes the story of the wise men who brought gifts to the new baby Jesus. These precedents make it perfectly clear that Dec. 25 is Jesus’s birthday. All the retailers will be closed on that day. This is not an obscure “holiday” like the civic holiday or Valentine’s Day. So “Merry Christmas” is the appropriate wish, not “Happy Holiday.” The two eminent “holy day” events in the Christian calendar are Christmas and Easter. These pivotal events celebrate the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The gospel (good news) of Jesus Christ is the foundational faith system of our society. When you read about Jesus’s “Kingdom of Heaven” values in his sermon on the mount, you quickly see that these values are parallel to the quality of life that we wish to preserve
