Merry effin Christmas

I've been wished Merry Christmas at a number of establishments in London, which is a little unusual since the British way of saying it is "Happy Christmas". I don't think "Happy Christmas" is wrong, but somehow to me it takes away the specialness of Christmas, you know it's Happy Birthday, Happy Valentine's Day, Happy President's Day...so why not have one holiday with a slightly different kind of joy?

Since the UK is about a year behind America in a number of social trends, I think the whole counter-revolution to the "war on Christmas" has finally drifted across the pond. Folks weren't that bothered about it before, but now they kinda are. It's weird. Sure there were the rabid commies in Birmingham who had "Winterval" - but if memory serves that was in January, so why not. And last year a neighbouring borough - Lambeth - erected "holiday" lights instead of Christmas lights - and after some opprobrium changed them back to Christmas lights without switching a single extension cord.

My council which is cheap, cheap, cheap value-for-money, as far as I can tell, leaves the lights up all year - saving money on labor and storage. The lights are a kind of non-distinguisable geometric pattern - and they become different lights at different holidays. Happy Diwali, Happy Eid, Happy Christmas - the lights change for the dates (no Happy Hannukah, I'm afraid - according to the last census there are more Americans living in my neighborhood than Jewish people - hmm, maybe they should switch them on for 4th of July!!). And not only that, but if you - as a merchant - would like some festive (Christmas, Diwali, Eid) lights in front of your store - then you gots to pony up the dough. The merchants on my street are of different faiths, but almost all of them display a Christmas greeting in their windows, which I think they also get from the council. Happy Christmas and Prosperous New Year it says. Most of them do a Happy Easter poster, too.

My work issues "Season's Greetings" to all of our clients, stakeholders and paymasters, but then again we are a Godless organisation full of former Communists and Labour party activists. As I blogged before, my coworkers have taken to not distributing Christmas cards - but instead emails with a salutation of "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" are circulated amongst comrades colleagues with a holier-than-thou message about making a contribution to some worthy [secular] cause in lieu of Christmas cards.

I joined the trend, since I'm lazy as all get-out. But I took particular delight in giving to the Salvation Army - you could hardly give to a more overtly Christian charity - unless maybe I'd given money to Jay Sekulow's (Pat Robertson's fave-lawyer) "Christian" defense fund. But a) I would never give money to those raving crackpots and b) my British colleagues might not get it. And I did wish folks a Merry Christmas - plus a Season's Greetings, but that was ironically.

Last year we were in Tennessee for Christmas, and folks were all up in arms. I don't think I heard a single "Happy Holidays". At Dollywood there were militantly "Merry Christmas" - the ticket lady wished us a Merry Christmas and then gave us a glinty stare until we echoed the salutation. The driver of the train of golf carts which delivered us to our area of the parking lot lectured us on the importance of saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "Season's Greetings", which I had to say was a little less than merry. Apparently, the war on Christmas never made it to East Tennessee, but that didn't stop the locals of taking up arms in preparation. All that lecturing and glaring kinda took a bit of the joy out of the season for me.

The only person I met in Knoxville retail last year who insisted on Happy Holidays was my brother. According to him, he waited until he received a salutation from the Customer - and if it were Merry Christmas then he'd reply with a jovial "Happy Holidays" and a smirky smile.