But if you really care mostly about it being part of western cultural tradition, I'd argue that it would be more appropriate to say "Happy Holidays" than "Merry Christmas." Because if you really study the cultural history of what we celebrate as Christmas today, it is more accurately, as Beetlejuice says upthread: a smorgasbord of pagan rites and rituals re-dressed to "appear" to be holy and chrisitan. I would add that what's special/unique about is that it's roots are in Northern/Central Europe with reach into Central Asia and Russia, anywhere there is the cold winter with snow and ice and it's a holiday meant to address hope and love warmth and reflection in the bleakest darkest days of the year. And I would add that it is not just pagan, but incorporating more than a few different  and sundry Christian rituals. (Roman Catholic powers-that-be cleverly inserted birth of savior child here where there was no childbirth before.) Victorian era English and Americans further expanded and popularized and solidified certain rituals and myths, some of them Germanic, others not.

Let me tell you the story about how my child-of-Polish-immigrants Roman Catholic mother and many other Catholic mothers in the Milwaukee neighborhood that I grew up in approached the problem of St. Nick vs. Santa Claus in a heavily German Lutheran city. As children, we hung up stockings on Dec. 5 and awoke to those stockings on Dec. 6 filled with candy or coal by St. Nick, a real saint of The Church. We learned Saint Nick was a saint kinda like St. Valentine. but one dedicated to looking out for whether children were naughty or nice!  On the evening of Dec. 24, another guy named Santa Claus (a more pagan kinda guy who we visited at the department store and to whom we addressed gift wish lists) came and put toys and other gifts for us under the Christmas tree. We had a little nativity scene we put under Santa's pagan tree to remind us that it was also Jesus's birthday and therefore a holy day of obligation, unlike Dec. 6 when we didn't have to go to church.

I have no idea how all this particular cultural practice happened, I don't know if my Mom's illiterate Polish mother (raised Eastern Rite Catholic with a Polish husband raised Roman Catholic) and her mother in her [pick one: Ruthenian/Ukrainian/Russian/German/Austro-Hungarian Empire] area of Poland also did it or it was a plot created by Milwaukee moms.

Now, place my story into the context of rmrd0000 and Peracles' debate on this thread about the ethnic origins of the real St. Nicholas! While their debate is interesting, it really really does strike one now how little the real St. Nicholas, whatever ethnic origin he might have, has to do with Christmas as we know it. And to debate it as if one person can be right and another wrong just looks absurd the longer they go at it. Heck, St. Nick, he has very little to do with Santa as we know him, who is an 1823 American creation of Clement Clarke Moore, as Emma Zahn has pointed out on another thread. And Moore's Santa Claus has very little to do with Northern European Christmas practices of the time, but a lot to do with the holiday's early origins.

To give you another example of how much of a cold northern multi-culti pick-and-choose smorgasbord of a holiday this whole thing is, look at the history of the "Christmas" carol Good King Wenceslas. It really is a mish mosh!  Where the English take an Eastern Orthodox Saint Stephen's Day of giving alms and turn it into Boxing Day and make it an extension of Christmas. So the whole gift giving thing really doesn't have anything to do with baby Jesus, nor is it just pagan, but with an Eastern Orthodox saint. And then a Victorian guy takes a 13th-century spring/Easter tune and makes it into a "Christmas carol."

Now go back and take a look at Wenceslas, the famous celebrant of Christmas giving St. Stephen's Day:

Wenceslas was considered a martyr and a saint immediately after his death in the 10th century, when a cult of Wenceslas grew up in Bohemia and in England.^[3] Within a few decades of Wenceslas's death, four biographies of him were in circulation.^[4][5] These hagiographies had a powerful influence on the High Middle Ages conceptualization of the rex justus, or "righteous king"—that is, a monarch whose power stems mainly from his great piety, as well as from his princely vigor.^[6]

What does that have to do with Christ's birth? Nothing! Is it important ancient western cultural tradition? Yes!

Why in the U.S. was the gift-giving tradition of Boxing Day/St. Stephen's Day rolled into Christmas day, why don't we celebrate it separately like the mother country does? Could it just maybe have something to do with that whole righteous king/noblesse oblige thingie?

Is any of all this stuff indigenous to Africa? No it's not! So yes, you are right, it is something particular to western culture. But not any one Christian church, and very much incorporating many northern pagan yule and solstice traditions.  Happy Holidays is quite appropriate, because Christmas as a western holiday is a real mish mosh of many many solstice period holidays!

Personally, I prefer this version:

The guy's really into people killing other people.

It's become pathological with him, I fear--beyond just going for the buck.

I see fear in Resistance's writings more than venom and hatred. Classic fire and brimstone preacher stuff; have fear and instill fear; get inside fear and revel in it. He often speaks what I consider Old Testament & Book of Revelation juju of the fearful, wrathful god, skipping over the new law of love of the Gospels as if the messages in them, and this one in particular, repeated often, weren't the main messages of Christianity.  Where The Gospels are altered, shimmied and squeezed to fit into the Old Testament and Revelation messages rather than the other way around.

Makes me glad the way I was raised in Vatican II Catholicism not to pay very much attention to any of the Bible but the Gospels until I was mature enough and educated enough in other things first. I believe some forms of teaching OT "bible stories" to kids-- as if they have much to do with Christianity, yet--probably really scare them and screw them up to boot. (In Judaism, Torah study is for grown men for a good reason.)

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. - Luke 2:10

(Likewise, Resistance's commentary on firearms has shown a great deal of fear, there of other humans who in Christianity are supposed to be your brothers and sisters.)

Nearly everything you quote from the Bible and nearly everything you say about it makes it sound as if you are not a believer that Jesus was the messiah come to earth. It's like you are still waiting for the real messiah predicted in the OT to come and change things in the end times, another Jesus, a different one.  For you, it's like Jesus was just another prophet in a string of prophets starting in the OT (here for example, you're going on about Jeremiah like he's no different from Jesus,) not the savior of mankind. It seems like for you salvation will only come at the rapture and the world is the same as it's always been, that there is no such thing as the years"Anno Domini "and the years "Before Christ." No recognition that things changed after he came, taught new ways, was crucified and resurrected, and washed original sin away. You constantly quote from the OT as if for believers Christ never arrived and didn't change things about man's relationship with God. Christians believe like the bumper sticker says, "Jesus saves." Saves, not will save in the endtimes. That when you are baptized and accept Christ, all that old stuff is washed away!

My only point really is that you don't espouse Christianity in a form recognizable to most Christians. Nor Judaism, since neither do they believe a lot of things you say. Maybe your beliefs fit some strange ancient "people of the book" cult that I don't know too well, but it sure doesn't sound like Christianity. You're certainly entitled to believe your own odd cult of the Bible, just don't delude yourself that it's going to be considered Christian by nearly anyone else who knows anything about Christianity.

I'm no longer a believer, but at least I know why. You don't even realize you're not one.

I like your solution.

That said, as I say, I had no trouble finding Christmas cards, even when I typed in "holiday cards." First up was The 12 Days of Cookies with that clever common "C" between the two words. But I have no problem with vendors creating any number of categories to suit all manner of needs.

"There is a presumption implied here that all Christian religious sects share the same culture. Not so, as this thread itself demonstrates."

I don't really get this, but I'm not fussed either way.

I thought your complaint was your difficulty in finding "Christmas" cards labeled as such, regardless of whether they were religiously Christmas or secularly Christmas.

That is, you found tabs for Hanukah cards and Kwanzaa cards, but Christmas cards of any kind were euphemized as "holiday" cards. But maybe I misunderstood.

For the record, I have NO problem with people wishing me a merry anything. So I'm very much like you in that.

I'll only add that some people who form part of a minority are often more sensitive about things like this than people who are, broadly, part of the majority.

But I'd wager Resistance sees himself very much as part of a small minority, a true Christian one. Part of your point, I think. Not all Christians feel themselves to be part of a majority, but feel very much like a persecuted minority. And that's a point worth exploring.

(A lot of splintering of Christian groups occurred in America. The Founders thought the splintering was a good thing because it would prevent any one of them from gaining too much power and becoming an established religion. So, we're right on track, perhaps.)

I suspect that at some point a bunch of merchants and educators realized it might not be a good way to make friends and influence people to wish folks a merry holiday (assume they celebrated it because, doesn't everyone?) when they might not be.

Might be akin to someone calling you Anna instead of Emma. Nothing wrong with Anna, but some people get irked when you can't get their name straight.

Edit to add: Most of the people using these euphemisms are mostly concerned that no one get pissed off and everyone buy as much of their product as possible. In the public sphere, they want to minimize the number of pissed off parents and constituents threatening this or that. "Holiday" seemed an easy, happy way to cover all bases. A good compromise. That's my guess. But as Joe. E. Lewis once said, "No one's perfect!"