I know that Texas Protestants only count three holidays this time of year, Black Friday (in liturgical terms it begins at sundown on Thanksgiving), Christmas, and New Years Day ;), but as a piss-poor Lutheran but a one-time very good Catholic I did a quick run-through of the holiday season. Advent began 11/29, St Nicholas’s feast day was 12/6, the feast of the Immaculate Conception was 12/8, Christmas is 12/25, St Stephen’s Day is 12/26, the Feast of the Circumcision (I lapsed a long time ago) is 1/1, and Epiphany is 1/6. Then Eastern Rite has some of the dates wrong but because my brother went Russian I have to be aware of them, Jews have Hanukkah, Muslims can’t agree on a day to–or whether to–celebrate the birth of the Prophet but it’s in there somewhere, and then there’s Kwanzaa, if anybody but white elementary schoolteachers still celebrate it.
I think that’s a full plate of Holiday Season, better than a month, to hope people enjoy, and I’m not even including the Wiccansm, Buddhists, Hindus, and everybody else. By limiting it to Merry Christmas, “merry” being an inappropriate emotional response to the birth of our Lord, I feel some people give me a theological poke in they eye, and I don’t like it. :mad: