Use common sense people.
When I call a business and they say “Happy Holidays” I am not offended (after all, Holiday is taken from the words Holy Day). While the odds are huge that here in America I celebrate Christmas (if only in a secular way) I can understand you don’t know on the front end of a phone call or as I walk up to the register. But— When I say at the end of the call (as just happened) “Thank you have a Merry Christmas.” Your reply should not be (as just happened), “Thank you, and .. (slight pause to catch yourself from the reflex of responding in kind) .. Happy Holidays.”
I heard the pause and the felt the awkward stumbling over Happy Holidays. So I had to ask, “Excuse me, I just said ‘Merry Christmas’ to you and you said ‘Happy Holidays’. Are you not allowed to say Merry Christmas? As you can guess, she said, “No sir, I am not. It’s a company policy.” I remained calm and tried to use logic, “But I just said it to you — so you are sure not going to offend me, ya know what I mean?” “Yes sir, but this call is recorded and… ” in other words, she’d get in trouble.
I thank her and move on to her supervisor. I then proceed to try and use logic again to explain to the supervisor that my problem was not with the operator, but with the company policy and that I WAS THE ONE WHO SAID MERRY CHRISTMAS FIRST! (All caps now because it’s crazy — I was not upset with her)
Finally I said, “Look, I understand your afraid to say Merry Christmas on the front end of the call, but at the end if I say Merry Christmas, you should respond in kind. If you say ‘Happy Kwanzaa’ to me, I’m not going to be offended — you wished me well based on your beliefs — ‘thank you and happy Kwanzaa to you.’ I don’t care if you wish me ‘Happy Festivus.’ If you wish me well, I’ll not be offended. But an intentional effort to NOT wish me a Merry Christmas when I just wished you one, DOES offend me.
Use common sense people.
And have a Merry Christmas.
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December 8th, 2006 at 11:06 am
I don’t even “understand” their unwillingness to let their people say Merry Christmas initially. As you say, you’re not offended by expressions about holidays you don’t celebrate — neither would I be, and I’d consider a person a bigot who claims offense at being wished a Happy Hannukah or whatever. When a business accommodates bigots by establishing a policy that their people are not to wish Merry Christmas, they’re legitimizing bigotry and becoming bigots themselves.
December 12th, 2006 at 12:59 am
I haven’t been here in far too long.
Hmm. Wait a minute. Is this that War on Christmas that Bill O’Reilly keeps telling me about?
Wow. This is secular humanism run rampant. It is completely unacceptable that someone may actually choose not to wish a customer a Merry Christmas.
I mean, this is really outrageous. With television’s two month, 24 hour-a-day stranglehold on the holiday, coupled with the gluttonous consumerism that has somehow overtaken a holiday ostensibly to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ but which is in fact actually a Christian-ized pagan celebration that was adopted into early Christian culture as a means of survival, I can see exactly why this is such a vital, important issue.
Much more so than the issues of the day that Jesus would actually be concerned about like . . . just for instance . . . genocide in the Sudan? Sectarian violence in Iraq? Or in the entire Middle East for that matter? Or what about our troops who won’t get to celebrate Christmas with their families? Or, closer to home, what about the children in this country, starving, infected with HIV, or dying from cancer, relying on “Christmas generosity overflow” for charitable donations for treatment and research that could save their lives?
Yes. This is definintely worth the time and righteous anger of every concerned Christian.
Merry Christmas!
December 18th, 2006 at 10:46 am
Good to have you back AD; even if your reply is stereotypically liberal. Yes, there are other bad things (I’ll admit worse things) going on in the world, so let’s trivialize anything that would expose “political correctness” in the truest and illogical form.
And Merry Christmas to you!