Greeting someone Merry Christmas is frowned upon nowadays. The phrase Happy Holidays is replacing the old greeting during Christmas time. I fail to understand the logic behind this change.
Merry Christmas to you all. The old-fashioned way.
But of late, I have understood that one cannot greet all with this seemingly simple greeting. It is not appropriate. Our childhood innocence of welcoming all during a particular time of the year, with the traditional greeting of Merry Christmas, has now become passé.
At present, as I am told the more pertinent greetings would be Happy Holidays.
But I fail to understand the logic behind this. Maybe I am getting old and missing the finer points of this opinion.
To find out and to understand, I did a quick online search. My search threw up various opinions. A few, I am listing below.
- Some argue that the word ‘merry’ is connected with the rudeness of the deprived classes, but ‘happy’ is associated with a higher-class sense, particularly because it is associated with the royal family greeting “Happy Christmas”. Every year, Queen Elizabeth II of England addresses the citizens of the United Kingdom on Christmas day with ‘Happy Christmas’.*
- And plenty of people who live in the US have a different religious tradition, or no religious tradition at all. If you say “Merry Christmas” to someone who celebrates Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or nothing at all, you could make them feel marginalized: like their own beliefs aren’t valued or respected by society. And that’s not a good way to feel around the holidays.**
- Historians believe it might boil down to a simple grammatical lesson. “Happy” is a word that describes an inner emotional condition, while “merry” is more of a behavior descriptor-something active and maybe even raucous. Consider, for example, the free-spirited act of “merry-making” versus the state of simply “being happy.”***
- Jewish people do not usually wish non-Jews a happy Hanukkah because it is not meaningful to people who are not Jewish. Using a specifically Christian religious greeting only among Christian believers and not assuming that everyone else adheres to the same belief system would be more meaningful to Christians and also more respectful to people of other faiths or those with none at all.****
There are plenty more, and most of these, more or less, give the same opinions. Some are related to class, some to religion, and some to purely linguistic nitpicking. But all the above are missing the very sentiments of greetings.
But before I go further, I must answer another pertinent question here. The question is, why do we greet?
As a Serbian proverb says — Life treats you well if you greet well. Greeting is a way of transmitting positive vibes to the person one is greeting, and in return, expects to get similar feelings. With greetings, we reach out to fellow humans with pleasing personalities and expect to be treated similarly.
Now, greetings are highly culturally specific. Different cultures have different ways of greeting. When cultures remain and grow in isolation, greetings rooted in one culture may be misunderstood and offend people from a different culture encountering one another for the first time. But, now we are all globally connected, and none live in isolation. And all of us know what is meant when someone greets us in their chosen cultural idiom.
Or do we?
The thoughts and sentiments projected during the greeting are more important than the words. I might be a non-believer, but I would appreciate some believer greeting me with the phrase May God Be With You. In his way, that person is wishing me good luck.
I am, for lack of any other appropriate term, a non-practicing Hindu. But I do not mind greeting and being greeted in various ways, irrespective of cultural or religious connotations — as long as the greetings are given in good faith and cheer. I do not mind being greeted with Merry Christmas, Id Mubarak, Ram Ram, or other religious or cultural-specific greetings. I also do not understand why one should be. I also do not accept the nitpicking difference between happy and merry. What is the harm of becoming merry once in a while? Why being boisterous, as meant by the word merry, is wrong? Why should one be so high-nosed? I do not understand this high-nosed pomposity.
So, for me, Merry Christmas or Id Mubarak, Happy Dessera or Happy Dewali, Subho Bijoya, or any other are all welcome as long as they come in good faith and cheer. Of course, I do not mind being greeted by Happy Holidays either.
- Read more at:
*https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/christmas-2022-why-do-we-say-merry-christmas-not-happy-christmas/articleshow/96366054.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst - **https://www.grammarly.com/blog/happy-holidays-or-merry-christmas/#:~:text=And%20plenty%20of%20people%20who,valued%20or%20respected%20by%20society.
- ***https://www.countryliving.com/life/a37128/origin-of-merry-christmas/
- ****https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/merry-christmas-isnt-a-religious-greeting/2016/12/28/e0755f36-cc73-11e6-85cd-e66532e35a44_story.html
Originally published at https://barun.substack.com.
