Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays?

My wife and I got back a couple of hours ago from last-minute Christmas shopping. We picked up a couple of more nick-knacks from Target, and we purchased some food for our Christmas Eve and Christmas dinners from Costco. On the way out the young doorman checked our receipt and thanked us, and wished us a Merry Christmas. I thought that was very nice, and I appreciate it.

My wife's in retail management and many stores wish their customers "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas." For some, the generic well-wishing is seen as a battlefront in the secular war on Christmas.

In any case, the "daily number" at Pew Research indicates that "a 45%-plurality have no preference for how they are greeted during the holiday season." But the Pew entry is oddly structured, even loaded in fact toward the "no preference" findings. The data are drawn from a poll in early December, which shows question wording and order playing an important role in determining greeting preferences:

When asked to choose between "Merry Christmas" and non-religious terms, most Americans (60%) say they prefer that stores and businesses greet customers by saying "Merry Christmas." Only one-in-four (23%) prefers the use of terms such as "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings," while 17% volunteer that they do not care which greeting is used.

But given the specific option of saying the choice of greeting really does not matter, a plurality does so. Asked a slightly different version of the question that, along with the two choices of preferred greeting, offers the alternative "or doesn't it matter to you?," 45% choose this last alternative. Only 42% say they prefer "Merry Christmas," while 12% prefer less religious terminology.

Most striking is the age difference in preferences for holiday greetings. Only among those ages 65 and over, does a majority (64%) opt for "Merry Christmas."

That preference declines across younger age groups with only 28% of those under age 30 opting for the Christmas greeting while roughly six-in-ten say the choice of greeting doesn't matter to them.

Several other groups stand out for their strong preference for the Christmas greeting. Even when explicitly offered the opportunity to say this issue doesn't matter, majorities of white evangelical Protestants (73%) and Catholics (53%) say they prefer "Merry Christmas." By contrast, a majority (64%) of seculars and nearly half (47%) of white mainline Protestants say this issue does not matter to them. Similarly, while more than six-in-ten Republicans prefer to be greeted with "Merry Christmas," nearly half (49%) of Democrats and a small majority (52%) of independents are unconcerned by stores' choice of holiday greetings.

Actually, being greeted cordially and thanked sincerely when shopping seems like a rarity in itself nowadays; and I'm not too worked up over the Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays trade-off. I do think the larger secularization of society is a disaster, however, and the findings on the narrow demographic cohorts who express a strong preference for the traditional Christmas greeting will certainly be welcomed by the atheists and Christmas-bashers working feverishing to completely banish religious expression from the public sphere.

In any case, here's wishing all of my readers, and any others who happen along here by chance, a wonderful Christmas Eve.

I'm having an earlier-than-usual family dinner and then I'll be heading out for Christmas Eve services at our church.