Christmas

Happy Holidays is a seasonal greeting common in the United States and Canada, and is typically used during the holiday season. "Holiday" is derived from Middle English holidai meaning "holy day"[1]. It is used as an inclusive greeting during the holiday season around Christmas to those who do not celebrate it, but instead other winter holidays like Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

In the United States, it can have several variations and meanings:

• As "Happy Holiday," an English translation of the Hebrew Hag Sameach greeting on Passover, Sukkot and Shavuot
• As "Happy Holiday," a substitution for "Merry Christmas"
• As "Happy Holidays," a collective wish for the period encompassing Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year
• As "Happy Holidays," an inclusive wish for those who celebrate other winter religious holidays, such as Hanukkah, or Winter Solstice
• As "Happy Holidays," a secular alternative for those who do not celebrate any religious holidays during the season

In the United States, "Happy Holidays" (along with the similarly generalized "Season's Greetings") has become the common greeting in the public sphere within the past decade, such as department stores, public schools and greeting cards.

Advocates of the phrase view it as an inclusive and inoffensive phrase that does not give precedence to one religion or occasion. Critics view it as an insipid alternative to "Merry Christmas," and view it as diminishing the role of Christianity in Christmas, or part of an alleged secular "War on Christmas". Opposition to the phrase is not limited to Christians; many non-religious people and atheists also roundly denounce the phrase as an example of "political correctness gone mad".