WHY WE SAY HAPPY HOLIDAYS and NOT MERRY CHRISTMAS

I had a few people respond to "Happy Holidays" by forcing the issue and asserting MERRY CHRISTMAS.  These people were strangers who did not know me or the people I was sitting with.  To one of them I finally said WE SAY HAPPY HOLIDAYS BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE IS CHRISTIAN.

Happy Holidays can encompass Thanksgiving, Christmas, Boxing Day, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and New Years Eve and New Years Day.  It can be said to strangers who you know nothing about when it comes to religion or spiritual beliefs including non-believers, doubters, and pagans.

If you are surrounded by people at your church or family whom you know to be believers in Jesus, by all means say Merry Christmas.  You won't insult anyone or come off as rude.

Etiquette is meant to allow or make other people feel comfortable.

EXCERPT: WOULD IT KILL YOU TO STOP DOING THAT? A MODERN GUIDE TO MANNERS : HENRY ALFORD

WOULD IT KILL YOU TO STOP DOING THAT?  A MODERN GUIDE TO MANNERS : HENRY ALFORD
Book is C 2012 Henry Alford

Twelve is Publisher

Page 100

"The true devil's candy of business e-mail, of course, is forwarding. If the essential piece of information to be gleaned here is "Never send any message to a business e-mail address that you'd be embarrassed to have the whole company read," a helpful addendum would be ... "Or anyone else, for that matter." In 2001, the CEO of a Kansas City- based health care information tenchology firm called Cerner Corporation sent an angry w-mail to his managers about his employees' work habits...The message was forwarded all the way to Yahoo's message board, where Wall Street saw it and assumed that Cerner was in trouble. In the blink of an eye, the company's stock had dropped 29 percent. Over the course of three days, the stock price fell from about forty-four dollars a share to thirty-four."