Cheer YC: Happy Holidays!
Wishing you and yours a very happy holidays and a great New Year.
But happy holidays!
Regardless, it's still a nice thing to do, don't you think?
Laws of Nordstrom.
There are plenty of people like me out there, for instance. My family celebrated christmas at this time of year when I was younger. I still feel like having a happy holiday right around now, but I don't connect with any of the Jesus stuff. Thanks to the original poster for wishing me a happy non-christmas-holiday-that-I-celebrate-around-the-same-time-as-christmas (on mine, I get to argue with people on the Internet!).
I feel your point has been thoroughly dismissed now. Happy holidays anyway!
Even if some subset of the population is going to lose the Jesus bit doesn't it make more sense to keep the name of the holiday the same? For instance, if you are going to send out holiday well wishes (which I appreciate, I also upmodded the original poster) and going to send them out at a specific time (for example, Dec. 25) doesn't it make sense to refer to the holiday as 'Christmas' ?
In my own limited personal campaign of holiday well-wishes, I usually end up only wishing Christmas greetings to people I know are Christians, sending more general holiday greetings to others at a time other than Christmas.
In conclusion, my contention is that if you are going to send your greeting on Christmas, you might as well call it a Christmas greeting. If you send it Dec. 20, or 27, then maybe a holiday greeting.
Will mass confusion ensue if generic "happy holidays" cards are sent on the same day as christmas? Will people not know what day of the year it is? There is no utility to the nomenclature. No religion owns the day, and it's hardly a religious holiday to begin with.
It doesn't offend me when people say merry christmas, it only offends me if they are attempting to correct somebody who says happy holidays. It's a superset. You're correcting someone who says "yes! it's the weekend!" with "no, but thank god it's Saturday!".
To my Christian friends Merry Christmas. To my Jewish friends Happy Hannukah. To my Atheist friends Happy Holidays. And to all a happy New Year. (Unless you're Chinese, then I'm a few weeks early.)
So uh... Happy Fourth of July!
It's all about market differentiation. You should ideally wish each person a holiday wish based on their unique belief and practices. Lots more karma in that than blanket statements.
It's the long tail of holiday-greeting-karma-whoring strategy. :)
Merry Christmas, all!
Seriously, you should contact my agent in Kenya for your $4,000,000 check. For a small fee of $10,000 you can have his phone number.
</tongue_in_cheek>
I was a few hours too early... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=92249
Edu, don't worry you still have New year ;)
Anyway, Happy Holidays all.
Makes my eyes bleed red and green :)
Weeks and months area also devoid of meaning, and again a need only for farmers, hunters and gatherers. Since we live in a digital age, why not celebrate periods that are a power of 2? Like 1024 ... counting my life in kilodays would relate a lot more to what I'm doing every day than the notion of the earth revolving around the sun.