As the transaction comes to a close, I hand my lovely customer her change and a holiday gesture.
I say: “Happy holidays to you,” with a tired clerk’s smile.
Kindly, conspiratorially, she leans in.
“It’s okay, darling, you can say Merry Christmas.”
At her receding frame, I can only stare. I feel wounded by her simplistic story of me; the good boy who is gentle and smart and will run the family business someday. Just once might have been fine, but after the third customer who poked fun at what they perceived to be an over-righteous sense of cultural sensitivity, I grew angry. To them I had become the wallpaper of the family business, and while they were being glib in a high-spirited holiday manner, they had not even considered that I might be using ‘Happy Holidays’ as a personal expression apart from simple retail jargon.
Doggedly, I seek a practice of cultural sensitivity that takes into account the multiplicity of religious identities, one that assumes our vocal expressions are gifts, windows into our individual identities. I adore a hearty ‘Merry Christmas!’ from family and stranger alike; it tells me the style of their holidays, their background and beliefs. Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, I want to hear them all. This is the essence of positive cultural exchange in view of the diversity to which we aspire.
A word on my beliefs: ambiguous. I choose to voice a secular and neutral expression, not because I am worried I will offend others, but as sincere encouragement to find peace and happiness during the holidays. Human transactions are fleeting, and unfortunately we must craft micro-expressions that are supposed to be a meaningful gesture of goodwill and human solidarity around a chilly season of rest and celebration. I understand my customers mean well; it is with kindness that they tried to connect with me, but in doing so a large assumption was made, perhaps several.
Christmas is inevitably a part of my life, a fact to which I hold no grudge. I enjoy spending time with my family; the relations of blood are special ones, and I feel blessed to enjoy them as people too. Christmas allows the shop to close for one day each year, when my father and I can spend rare time without talking business. After the lights go down, I slip outside into the quietest night of the year. This year it snowed, and I danced tipsily among the flakes, brushing through pine boughs and feeling their stalwart energy. I need not shun Christmas to experience it in a Pagan way, but my own prerogative is important to me, and I express this in all of my speech, no matter how quipped.
I spent a happy holiday; thank you for asking so nicely, so warmly. I hope the same is true for you.
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