Christmas: season for a Grinch or a grin?

A politically correct greeting, it seems to me, demands we correctly identify each person's race and religion, among a slew of identity tags.

In the United States, you'd have to say "happy Hanukkah" and "happy Kwanzaa" on top of "merry Christmas". But what if the target is someone who converted from Christianity to Judaism, or an African-American who became Buddhist?

Fortunately there is the all-inclusive "season's greetings" so you avoid the mention of a specific holiday.

But the logic still holds. If you say "happy New Year" to a dozen people who belong to 12 ethnicities, each with a different day for the occasion, each one could give you the look as if you've committed the biggest blunder of racial insensitivity.

This is not a black comedy scenario I have just invented. It is happening all over the world, including the US and China - albeit not to that scale. Someone who does not celebrate Christmas and is offended by "merry Christmas" is taking the origin of the holiday too seriously. There seems to an assumption that one who is greeted must be a Christian, or rather, a Christian of certain denominations.

The intertwining of religion and ethnicity has further complicated the matter. And forget about conversion.

Basically, I've figured out that unless one wears a tag that says "I celebrate Christmas" it is unsafe to bring up the name of the holiday even if you're carried away with too much caroling.

China's relentless drive to import major Western holidays and secularize or localize them, to a degree, is not bad. Yes, there is a whiff of vanity behind the association with Western customs.

But there is no loyalty whatsoever. It is just one more excuse to sell or buy something. Left to the Jack Mas of the world, every day could be turned into a holiday. Just witness Singles Day, which took just three years to become the most populous nation's biggest shopping day - bigger than Thanksgiving and Christmas combined.

Just as we have two sets of holidays, based on the two calendars, we don't mind adding some more. You can criticize all you want the vulgar commercialization of traditional holidays and festivals, but one thing it is not is fundamentalism. It is very tolerant of customs and lifestyles from different parts of the world.

The way I see it, most Chinese who celebrate Christmas just want to have fun. You can call it "mock Christmas" if you want. By no means does it hint at their religious and political bent.

Likewise, grandstanding is the reason behind those who openly boycott it. There is a palpable sense of play-acting in their costumes, postures and expressions. It's a "mock protest" so to speak.

If you ask them to swear off anything Western, they'd think you're crazy.

When I first heard of the word "Christmas" (shengdan, or literally sacred birth), the meaning did not dawn on me. I intuited it was the Western equivalent of the Spring Festival. With the pervasive use of homonyms, I now often receive written greetings that spell out "leftover eggs" for "shengdan".

If the trend persists, future Chinese may equate Dec 25 with a feast and bar-hopping followed by bingeing on leftover food the next day.

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