Retraction

I have been thinking about this thing they call The Holidays here. You may recall I mentioned it with disdain in a passage of the Journal. But I find I was wrong about it. It is not, as I suspected, something that has been imposed by that pervading monster, political correctness. I have checked with Kathy and she assures me that the expression has been around for much longer than PC-ness itself. It's just an American thing.

It's obvious now that I think about it - if the PC bunch were wanting to get rid of any reference to Christmas, they would hardly replace it with a word that means "holy days". We all know that there was a time when the only relief from drudgery our ancestors were granted was on those days declared holy in the Christian calendar. From there it is a short step to "holidays".

My misunderstanding came about because in England we use the word "holidays" to mean any time we have off from work. We have even added days off that we call "Bank Holidays" which must surely indicate our respect for money and the banks that keep it.

I have known for a long time that the Americans use the word "vacation" where we would say "holiday". And this makes sense since it indicates that one has vacated one's place of work for the period, leaving it vacant for at least a while. But this explains my surprise the first time I heard Christmas referred to as The Holidays. I had not expected to hear the word "holidays" in America and I wondered why an exception had been made just for this one occasion.

Of course, I opted for the first possibility that came along - that PC-dom had declared this change to avoid the word "Christmas", so heavy with religious import. And now I see that it is not so. I apologize to PC-dom for having so unjustly accused it.

I still don't know where the expression comes from. Was it perhaps done in the interests of efficiency, "Happy Holidays" being so much easier and quicker to say than "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year"? Maybe, as is often the case, the Americans have preserved an old version of the greeting while we in England have complicated the issue by introducing both Christmas and New Year into our salutation? I really can't say.

But now I think it's rather nice to resurrect the idea of Christmas being holy (meaning "set apart for or dedicated to God"). It might even be a way of reclaiming the festival for Christ, as so many Christians desire. So now, even though the phrase still sounds strange to me, I will have to get used to saying it. And, as a first step along that path, may I take this opportunity of wishing whoever happens to read this:

Happy Holidays!