It’s Hanukkah, so the first thing we need to do is figure out how we’re going to spell Hanukkah.
The proper spelling of Hanukkah, alas, requires a different alphabet than this one. There is no “English word for Hanukkah,” only various attempts at English transliterations of an ancient Hebrew word. Gretchen McCulloch has a playful, fascinating rundown of the difficulties involved at All Things Linguistic, concluding with this:
This all means that these are all the correct spellings in English, from a Hebrew standpoint, from most-strict transliteration to the most permissive:
- Khanukkah
- Chanukkah
- Hanukkah
- Chanukka (h is silent, double-k still serves a phonetic purpose that I didn’t bother going much into)
- Hanukah
- Hanukka
- Hanuka (as much as it makes me twitch)
I’m sticking with AP style, which goes with option No. 3 there: Hanukkah.
The trickiness of deciding how to spell this word is one of the many good reasons that polite Americans around this time of year will wish one another “Happy Holidays.” It’s just easier than trying to spell “Hanukkah.”
The main reason we say “Happy Holidays,” of course, is because it’s plural. The end of the year brings a steady stream of holidays — Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year’s at a minimum. “Happy Holidays” covers all of them.
And since there’s no place like home for the holidays, no matter how far away you roam, lots of us are traveling. That means that even the people you see most days might not be around closer to any given holiday, and it’s much more convenient and more polite to just wish them a blanket, all-encompassing “Happy Holidays” than to speculate or calculate whether or not you’ll likely see them again during the frantic week between Christmas and New Year’s.
“Happy Holidays” is much better, for all concerned, than holding everyone up in order to list a long series of holidays punctuated by repeated iterations of “… and if I don’t see you before …” You’re wishing them happiness, not trying to make them miss their flight.
The second biggest reason we say “Happy Holidays” is because of Khanukkah Chanukkah Hanukkah. Or, more generally, because not everybody celebrates every one of the holidays listed on our calendars. That’s sometimes the case because not everybody belongs to the same religion, but it’s also sometimes true for personal reasons. When we’re full of holiday spirit and holly jolly cheer, we say hello to friends we know and ev’ryone we meet. But we don’t know everyone we meet. We don’t know which holidays they may or may not celebrate. So we say “Happy Holidays” because that covers it.
It’s rude to wish someone a happy [occasion they do not celebrate]. It can also be hurtful. In any case, it’s also just odd behavior. Today, for example, is Tupou I Day, but if you’re walking around anywhere other than Tonga wishing ev’ryone you meet a “Happy Tupou I Day!” they’re going to think, correctly, that you’re kind of strange.
When it comes to ev’ryone we meet, “Happy Holidays” is simply a more accurate, more polite, and more neighborly greeting. That’s not the case with “friends you know,” because you know them and, being a good friend, you know which holidays they do and do not celebrate. If they celebrate Christmas you say “Merry Christmas,” and if they celebrate Hanukkah, you say “Happy Hanukkah.” No one says “Happy Holidays” to their closest friends or family members.
That’s significant, because it proves the “War on Christmas” hysteria is pure malarkey. It proves that “Happy Holidays” is a kind, polite greeting/blessing that acknowledges both the pluralism of our culture and the plural number of holidays clustered here at the end of the year. It proves, more pointedly, that “Happy Holidays” is very obviously not a hostile attempt to impose a secularist hegemony and that nobody is trying to use it as such.
I work in retail and I’ve been wishing customers a “Merry Christmas” since back in October. At first that was mainly as a wry form of apology, since it was 60 degrees outside, the World Series hadn’t even started yet, and they weren’t yet thinking about Christmas when they walked into our greenhouse to find me setting up a forest of artificial trees and inflatable lawn Santas. They’d look surprised and confused and stammer something about air filters for a self-propelled Toro and I’d smile and say a cheery “Merry Christmas! Um, yeah, lawn mower parts are over here. Let me show you. …”
Now it’s December and I’m spending most of my time racing to restock Christmas lights and trees in that same greenhouse while a steady stream of customers loads up their carts with Santas and wreaths and all the rest. When I greet those customers — the ones buying lots of explicitly Christmas-y stuff — I wish them “Merry Christmas.” Because I’ve already seen that these are Christmas-celebrating folk, and that’s what one says to people one knows celebrate Christmas.
But if I’m outside of the red-and-green haze of the greenhouse, helping a customer find leaf bags so they can do some yard work, I’ll say “Happy Holidays,” because that’s what one says to people at this time of year if one doesn’t know which holidays they do or do not celebrate. One says this to be polite. And one says because one is not so blindered and foolish as to think that everyone else is or should be exactly the same.
I find I’m saying “Happy Holidays” much more often ever since the whole “War on Christmas” balderdash began, because the demagogues promoting that nonsense have made it necessary. They have weaponized the phrase “Merry Christmas,” turning it into a chauvinist assertion of sectarian hegemony, thereby casting suspicion on every use of the phrase. In their use of it, “Merry Christmas” has little to do with neighborly well-wishing or with holiday cheer or glad tidings or good will to all. And thus the rest of us must now be cautious not to be misinterpreted as doing the same. We now have to struggle to find a way to wish a “Merry Christmas” to our neighbors who celebrate Christmas without coming across like hostile assholes eager to pounce on and slaughter any Ephraimite who fails to properly pronounce our culture-war shibboleths.
I’ve been toying with an alternative holiday greeting, one that might capture the spirit of both Christmas and Hanukkah. But so far my proposed greeting — a cheerful “Death to the Empire!” — isn’t catching on, so for now I guess I’ll stick with “Happy Holidays.”
But here, among friends I know, let me be more specific and wish the happiest of Happy Hanukkahs to all those here who celebrate it.
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