"Every time someone says ‘Happy Holidays’, an angel gets AIDS" Jon Stewart

So about this time every year Christmas and all the other winter holidays creep up on us. And with these holidays the ever growing controversy behind the appropriate yuletide greeting grows. The politically correct thing to say is "Happy Holidays" but does this make anybody happy? Basically anybody you talk to will either say "I hate hearing 'happy holidays'" or they'll say "I don't care, leave me alone." I would bet you a lot of money that nobody would ever rather hear "happy holidays" than their traditional holiday greeting.

The question is who is happy holidays for? I don't personally know the origins of the phrase, but the general understanding is that it was coined to be a politically correct version of Merry Christmas. So what I want to know is this, do people out there actually get offended by Merry Christmas? I realize not everyone celebrates Christmas and that's fine, people can do whatever they want, but why do they have to take it out on the people that do? I don't celebrate Hanukkah but if someone said "Happy Hanukkah" to me I certainly wouldn't feel offended. And also do these bureaucrats not even think about Jehovah's Witnesses? Do they realize that they don't celebrate anything ever? So saying "Happy Holidays" to them, in theory, would be just as offensive as saying "Merry Christmas" to a Jewish person. How long will it be till they clue in and just start saying "Good Winter."  

This whole "Happy Holidays" thing is actually quite a deep problem. Yes, I would much rather hear people saying Merry Christmas, but is that fair? If people are actually offended by Merry Christmas shouldn't we as Christians be more sensitive and try to avoid offending people even if it means doing something we don't necessarily like? It's easy to argue that everyone else is just too sensitive and we're right, but you have to look at this objectively. In Canada we claim to be proud of our diversity so shouldn't we do all that we can to accommodate  people of other faiths who have other traditions?

This is a double-edged sword. On one hand by saying "Merry Christmas" it could potentially be seen as us purposely ignoring other traditions and forcing Christmas on the general population. On the other hand by us not saying "Merry Christmas" it's like us rolling over and letting the government control what we say, it's like Nineteen Eighty-Four but more arbitrary.

So what's right? Are these words really worth all the commotion? I don't have the answers to these questions, what you say around this time of year is your personal choice so do whatever you want... Merry Christmas.