Comment by ookdatnog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ookdatnog | Hacker News Reader

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This is an inversion of reality.

If someone chooses to say "happy holidays" rather than "merry Christmas" out of sensitivity or political correctness, that does not constitute cancelling. The term cancelling is usually used for deliberate and sustained social pressure and boycotting campaigns. As far as I am aware this has not occurred on any significant scale to try to stop people from saying "merry Christmas".

In the other direction, however, this has very much happened. Conservative Christian organizations have called for boycotts of companies who don't mention Christmas in their Christmas marketing (or, in some cases, even just for mentioning non-Christian holidays) repeatedly over the last two decades. [0]

To avoid weak-manning here: I'm sure this is a pretty fringe group and not at all representative of Christians in general. But it is clear that the campaign to force people to use traditional Christmas greetings and imagery has always been more prominent and aggressive than the campaign to abolish traditional Christmas greetings.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_controversies#Retail...

Many companies don't allow their employees to say Merry Christmas, because it could offend customers.

When you interact with public employees and 10 out of 10 say "Happy Holidays", it becomes a social norm. Breaking that norm then feels uncomfortable, and people who are already biased against Christians will seize the opportunity to say that Merry Christmas is insensitive.

You can only say that the messaging for "Bring Back Merry Christmas" is more aggressive - the tactics on the Happy Holidays side are certainly ruthless, because there's a profit motive behind it.

You can find that frustrating, but that doesn't make it cancelling. To be cancelling, it has to be a deliberately sustained campaign.

In this case, as you said yourself, it's just a plain and simple profit motive. Companies want as broad appeal as possible, so they instruct their employees to use neutral greetings. There is no intent there to destroy the traditional greeting, so it's clearly not cancelling.

We can certainly debate on the intent, but ultimately, the result is the same - no one says Merry Christmas anymore, and Christians are sometimes sad about this.

I think it feeds into the feeling of victimhood. It seems all-encompassing. Which makes these people sternly-pro-Merry-Christmas.

I think this is so weird. I live in a "democrat-run city" to use a phrase popularized by the weird right, and people here say Merry Christmas if someone says Merry Christmas to them or they know each other from church, and say Happy Holidays if you don't know the holiday someone celebrates and they're not wearing a Christmas tree sweater. It's a pretty easy algorithm. I don't think anyone feels like Christmas spirit is lacking.

Your last few sentences are right: the people I know who are outraged about the war on Christmas are Christians of a certain type who feel like they have not received what has been promised to them. They're well-off, have houses built for them in nice new suburban developments, have a couple cars, don't seem like they're hurting for money or jobs, but they've just really got a chip on their shoulder about other people getting what they deserve.

I'm probably re-centering a category right now :) This was a very interesting article and it's fun to try to find all the examples of this I can.

You have every right to lament or protest a trend that you don't like, but by claiming you're being cancelled, you are making a very strong claim about intent ("they" want to destroy our tradition), one that you fail to back up.

This creates a harmful tribalism.

I don't know about the US, but I say "merry Christmas" to people I see before the 24th and that I will for sure see before the 1rst,and a "happy holidays" equivalent if won't met between the two days. Are you sure it's only profit motivated and not a will to be semantically correct?

Which companies are those?

Walmart for one (the largest employer in the United States). When was the last time you heard an employee tell you Merry Christmas?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/an-unmerried-woman/

From that article, Walmart tries to play it off like they only "suggest" their employees say Happy Holidays.

But I've worked at Walmart, and if you've ever worked at a place like that, you know that people who don't follow "suggestions" are quickly fired.

That's not Walmart being politically correct though, it's Walmart being a commercial enterprise that has 1 preference (higher revenues).

They do other dumb things, like for a long time plenty of people wouldn't buy any music there, because they censored it. Here's the New York Times making a parallel argument to yours, 25 years ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/12/arts/wal-mart-s-cd-standa...

Of course, in that situation it's somewhat likely that Christians comprise most of the group that Walmart is trying not to bother.

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