Happy Holidays?

For many people this has not been a happy year. Lots of people have lost their job or at least had their hours cut or their pay cut, still others have lost their homes to foreclosure or have had to delay the purchase of a new home because they couldn't sell their current one; and on and on. But I just read a story about a woman in Florida who has apparently lost her job because she would not say "Happy Holidays" when she answered the phone. What has this world come to? Now that I work for a large, national company that employs over thousands of people, I had to go through something called "diversity training" when I first started working for them. This was part of a full week of instruction for new employees of the firm, and it was mandatory. In it, we learned to respect all of our fellow co-workers and to be careful of what we say and do around them because they might not share our same beliefs, morals, and sexual orientation. It was designed not as much to prevent hurting a co-worker's feelings as much as it was to show that the employer had provided training on these topics to thwart legal action from sexual harassment suits and the ACLU. But what bothers me more about not being able to forward funny e-mails, and telling jokes in the office, is this whole "Happy Holidays" thing. Now think about it. Obviously not everyone celebrates Christmas, most notably the Atheists. But unless you work for Walgreen's, just about everyone I know takes Christmas day off, even the Atheists. Now, I would not be offended if a Jewish person wished me a Happy Hanukkah, or if an African-American wished me a Happy Kwanzaa. I love holidays and wish we had more of them. I have always been a big proponent of Boxing Day and I have always gone out of my way to wish people a Super-fantastic Groundhog Day! So what's the big deal about saying Merry Christmas? After all, it is a National holiday! If I say to someone, Merry Christmas, I am wishing them a wonderful day off to celebrate with their friends and families, in their own family traditions. Even though it is a Christian holy day that is marked as the day to celebrate the birth of Jesus, I am not saying that if you don't believe in Jesus you are going to Hell (future blog topic)! So relax. It still says Christmas on my calendar, so I will say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays! If you don't agree, well, air your grievances. There's Festivus for the rest of us!