And I bet if you sent 'Happy Hanukkah' vs. 'Happy Holidays' you'd get much more traffic from Jewish recipients. Repeat with any holiday specific to a group.
I'm not religious, it's just the goddamn holiday. I don't say 'happy holidays' to a Jew, because it's flat out rude. They're Jewish, it's their religious holiday and I respect that. I'll say happy Kwanzaa if I knew someone celebrated it. I'll say happy noodle day to a spaghetti monsterist.
I like respect. If I'm spending money, I want some damn respect or I'll go to the little store downtown and buy something that's actually celebrating the holiday I'm buying for: Christmas.
Oh, and what if you're talking to a Pagan? Do you identify them by the sacrificial blood they are so clearly wearing?
Note: This method isn't 100% accurate due to the lack of verified studies into the field of divination, and the fact that a large subset of people would hit you if you pelt them with seemingly random foods.
They're saying "Happy Holidays", not "Happy Holiday". There are all sorts of holidays in December, including New Years.
I've yet to see 'Happy Holidays' when they're selling me Easter Eggs. So I grant your technicality but they're not using it that way given their own usage methods for multiple holidays.
I'd understand this terminology more in British-speaking countries where 'holiday' veritably means any non-regular brake from work. Whilst in North America it is almost literally still used for its original meaning as a Holy-day - with vacation denoting the chiefly British usage of holiday.
So why, in the US when Holiday is virtually still a contraction of Holy day are they not simply using the days name, when they use every other holidays name including other days of religious origin.
I believe the death/martyrdom and ressurection of Christ on Easter weekend is likely to be a more offensive holiday to bring up in the presence of Jews than his birth. But then, you know, that's logic. You can never be logical and politically correct, it must cause cancer or brain aneurysms as by the present date evolution seems to have made them mutually exclusive.
That doesn't stop it from being a holiday. I don't shop for Christmas presents at my grocery store, but they still put up decorations and wish me a Happy Christmas or Happy Holidays. Both are accurate, and neither rely on me buying stuff for said holidays.
> I've yet to see 'Happy Holidays' when they're selling me Easter Eggs.
There aren't multiple popularly celebrated holidays at Easter time, so it'd be inaccurate then.
> You can never be logical and politically correct...
[citation needed]
To me this looks like a thoroughly ridiculous and awfully US-centric “controversy”.
I've known more people who were upset by "Merry Xmas" than anything else.
The experiment was, however, about as controlled for general USA populous as we were able to do - big box retailer, drives most customer acquisition via SEM / SEO so these type of results should be duplicatable if your customers find you through search engines.