{"id":43362,"date":"2018-12-04T07:00:58","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=43362"},"modified":"2018-12-03T17:47:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T22:47:42","slug":"advent-calendar-day-4-happy-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2018\/12\/04\/advent-calendar-day-4-happy-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent Calendar Day 4: Happy Holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It\u2019s Hanukkah, so the first thing we need to do is figure out how we\u2019re going to spell Hanukkah.<\/p>\n

The proper spelling of Hanukkah, alas, requires a different alphabet than this one. There is no \u201cEnglish word for Hanukkah,\u201d 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<\/a>, concluding with this:<\/p>\n

This all means that these are all the correct spellings in English,\u00a0from a Hebrew standpoint, from most-strict transliteration to the most permissive:<\/p>\n
\n
Khanukkah<\/li>\n
Chanukkah<\/li>\n
Hanukkah<\/li>\n
Chanukka (h is silent, double-k still serves a phonetic purpose that I didn\u2019t bother going much into)<\/li>\n
Hanukah<\/li>\n
Hanukka<\/li>\n
Hanuka (as much as it makes me twitch)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019m sticking with AP style, which goes with option No. 3 there: Hanukkah.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cHappy Holidays.\u201d It\u2019s just easier than trying to spell \u201cHanukkah.\u201d<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
The main<\/em> reason we say \u201cHappy Holidays,\u201d of course, is because it\u2019s plural<\/em>. The end of the year brings a steady stream of holidays \u2014 Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year\u2019s at a minimum. \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d covers all of them.<\/p>\n
And since there\u2019s 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\u2019s much more convenient and more polite to just wish them a blanket, all-encompassing \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d than to speculate or calculate whether or not you\u2019ll likely see them again during the frantic week between Christmas and New Year\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cHappy Holidays\u201d is much better, for all concerned, than holding everyone up in order to list a long series of holidays punctuated by repeated iterations of \u201c\u2026 and if I don\u2019t see you before \u2026\u201d You\u2019re wishing them happiness, not trying to make them miss their flight.<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\nThe second biggest reason we say \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d is because of <del>Khanukkah<\/del> <del>Chanukkah<\/del> Hanukkah. Or, more generally, because not everybody celebrates every one of the holidays listed on our calendars. That\u2019s sometimes the case because not everybody belongs to the same religion, but it\u2019s also sometimes true for personal reasons.\u00a0 When we\u2019re full of holiday spirit and holly jolly cheer, we say hello to friends we know and ev\u2019ryone we meet. But we don\u2019t know<\/em> everyone we meet. We don\u2019t know which holidays they may or may not celebrate. So we say \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d because that covers it.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s\u00a0rude<\/em> to wish someone a happy [occasion they do not celebrate]. It can also be hurtful. In any case, it\u2019s also just odd behavior. Today, for example, is Tupou I Day, but if you\u2019re walking around anywhere other than Tonga wishing ev\u2019ryone you meet a \u201cHappy Tupou I Day!\u201d they\u2019re going to think, correctly, that you\u2019re kind of strange.<\/p>\nWhen it comes to ev\u2019ryone we meet, \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d is simply a more accurate, more polite, and more neighborly greeting. That\u2019s not the case with \u201cfriends you know,\u201d 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 \u201cMerry Christmas,\u201d and if they celebrate Hanukkah, you say \u201cHappy Hanukkah.\u201d No one says \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d to their closest friends or family members.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s significant, because it proves the \u201cWar on Christmas\u201d hysteria is pure malarkey. It proves that \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d 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 \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d is very obviously not a hostile attempt to impose a secularist hegemony and that nobody is trying to use it as such.<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bing Crosby Happy Holiday\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1LLacwqxC6Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\nI work in retail and I\u2019ve been wishing customers a \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d 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\u2019t even started yet, and they weren\u2019t 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\u2019d look surprised and confused and stammer something about air filters for a self-propelled Toro and I\u2019d smile and say a cheery \u201cMerry Christmas! Um, yeah, lawn mower parts are over here. Let me show you. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\nNow it\u2019s December and I\u2019m 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 \u2014 the ones buying lots of explicitly Christmas-y stuff \u2014 I wish them \u201cMerry Christmas.\u201d Because I\u2019ve already seen that these are Christmas-celebrating folk, and that\u2019s what one says to people one knows celebrate Christmas.<\/p>\nBut if I\u2019m outside of the red-and-green haze of the greenhouse, helping a customer find leaf bags so they can do some yard work, I\u2019ll say \u201cHappy Holidays,\u201d because that\u2019s what one says to people at this time of year if one doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\nI find I\u2019m saying \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d much more often ever since the whole \u201cWar on Christmas\u201d balderdash began, because the demagogues promoting that nonsense have made it necessary. They have weaponized the phrase \u201cMerry Christmas,\u201d turning it into a chauvinist assertion of sectarian hegemony, thereby casting suspicion on every use of the phrase. In their use of it, \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d 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 \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d 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.<\/p>\nI\u2019ve been toying with an alternative holiday greeting, one that might capture the spirit of both Christmas and Hanukkah. But so far my proposed greeting \u2014 a cheerful \u201cDeath to the Empire!\u201d \u2014 isn\u2019t catching on, so for now I guess I\u2019ll stick with \u201cHappy Holidays.\u201d<\/p>\nBut here, among friends I know, let me be more specific and wish the happiest of Happy Hanukkahs to all those here who celebrate it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Advent Calendar Day 4: Happy Holidays<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"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. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Advent Calendar Day 4: Happy Holidays","description":"The main reason we say \"Happy Holidays,\" of course, is because it's plural. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}