Life is already sad enough without its sadness's
being compounded by "the holiday season." But the season is so entrenched as a traditional practice of wallowing in religiosity, nostalgia, and/or shopping, it isn't going to go away anytime soon.
On Thursday at the holiday party where I work, a colleague greeted me with a hearty "Merry Christmas!" and I responded perversely with a less robust "Happy Holidays." We then proceeded to have a longer conversation than I would have expected, not because we got into a discussion about the discrepancy, but I think because the discrepancy made us ill at ease and created a need for us to demonstrate that we could still be friendly, despite it.
At least, it made
me ill at ease, since I was the perverse one. I kept thinking about why I'd not just replied in kind and avoided the contretemps, and wondered what she might be thinking about it. (I guess the only way to find out will be to ask her one day—perhaps by sending her a link to this post.)
And I've kept thinking about it, and discovered an irony in the way holiday greetings are done. "Merry Christmas" is uttered (or said in greeting cards) by people who "believe in Christmas" (or not) and intend to celebrate it themselves (whether or not they believe in it), regardless of the beliefs or practices of those to whom they utter it.
I replied "Happy Holidays" as a way—ineffective perhaps—of registering that I
don't "believe in Christmas" and don't like to celebrate it. But it would actually have been more appropriate for me to tell
her "Merry Christmas," since she presumably will celebrate it and would like it to be merry.
And, following that logic, she might better have said "Happy Holidays" to me (assuming that she was aware of my attitude toward Christmas).
Except that I don't even like "the holidays," whether religious or commercial, or just sentimental or an excuse to party. Calendar-occasioned conviviality seems false somehow, other-directed
1.
Earlier yesterday, I had concluded a response to an email distribution list with:
Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, Happy New Year's (if you celebrate that).
Good on you in any case.
An if-it-applies qualification might not catch on for party exchanges, but it does suggest a marketing opportunity for greeting card manufacturers.
I wonder whether writing that email before going to the party set me up to respond the way I did to my colleague's greeting. I had, after all, if unconsciously, already begun to think about these seasonal greetings and their appropriateness/inappropriateness—if not enough yet to realize that the conversation with my colleague might have gone better something like this:
She opens with, "Merry Christmas!"
"Merry Christmas! But I'm not into Christmas, actually."
"Oh, sorry. Happy Holidays!"
"Thanks, that's better. But I'm not really into the holidays either...."
"Oh, I see. Well, no problem. Hello!"
"Thanks, that'll do."
She reflects, then adds, "They are hectic, though, aren't they? The holidays, Christmas, Hanukkah, Eid, Kwanzaa, Yuletide, New Year's...."
"Indeed, what a drag. I'd rather skip the whole month of December."
"I know what you mean."
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- Wikipedia's paragraph on sociologist David Riesman's 1950 book, The Lonely Crowd:
...a sociological study of modern conformity, which postulates the existence of the "inner-directed" and "other-directed" personalities. Riesman argues that the character of post WWII American society impels individuals to "other-directedness", the preeminent example being modern suburbia, where individuals seek their neighbors' approval and fear being outcast from their community. This lifestyle has a coercive effect, which compels people to abandon "inner-direction" of their lives, and induces them to take on the goals, ideology, likes, and dislikes of their community. Ironically, this creates a tightly grouped crowd of people that is yet incapable of truly fulfilling each other's desire for companionship. The book is considered a landmark study of American character.
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