Why is it only ‘Happy Holidays’ and not ‘Merry Christmas’?

Dear Editor

With another joyous Christmas season upon us, why is it that everywhere you go and whatever you do at this wonderful time of year, it seems that it’s harder and harder to get someone to simply say “Merry Christmas”?

I went shopping in search of Christmas greeting cards to post to family and friends. Once again, as in recent years past, I found it more and more difficult to find cards that read “Merry Christmas.” I went to several stores in search of them, a very frustrating experience. Oh yes, I found several with such phrases as “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings,” and similar other phrases, but almost none with “Merry Christmas” — such a simple phrase, that means so much in these trying times we are living in.

Why can’t we just say “Merry Christmas”? Seems as though when you go to retail stores and restaurants, all around the sales associates and the waitress/waiters choose to only say the same boring generic greetings, “Happy Holidays,” and similar “Seasonal Greetings” — but oh no — heaven forbid — they won’t say “Merry Christmas.”

Even ads in the newspapers and sales flyers we read don’t say “Merry Christmas.”

Why is it that in this wonderful country, Guyana the land of many waters, warm sunshine and many races, we seem to have become the United States of the Offended? In our seemingly difficult world we live in — it would seem to me that we should keep the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in our hearts and our thoughts each and every day — especially throughout the Christmas season, after all, that’s what Christmas is all about.

We need to slow down and take a moment and realise what the “real meaning” of Christmas is ‒ the birth of Christ. It appears to me that a great many people are indeed missing the real picture here. We’d better get back to the basics and the foundation that most of us in this country seem to have forgotten, or simply thrown away. I say bring back “Merry Christmas” and we all should take sincerity in the words and true meaning for celebrating Christmas in the future. So let’s just cut through all this political correctness rhetoric and let’s just say “Merry Christmas”!

Yours faithfully,

Rooplall Dudhnath