Several years ago, during the most wonderful time of year, I recall visiting the grocery store and wishing the cashier a “Merry Christmas.” His reply of “a Happy Holiday to you, too” left me puzzled, to say the least. What exact “Holiday” did he mean to wish me “Happy”? I had wished him a Merry Christmas; it’s not as if my religious leanings were in doubt. He could not have possibly meant to wish me Happy Hanukkah, and even that I would not mind. If he had meant New Year’s, then why not just wish me a “Happy New Year.” Kwanzaa … well, I’ll get to that in a moment.
The clerk’s insistence on saying “Holiday” instead of Christmas reminds me of how G.K. Chesterton said the West is “on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.” Nothing better sums that up than a meme currently circulating the Twitterverse:
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