The “Happy Holidays” vs. “Merry Christmas” debate now seems to be the staple controversy of retail department stores every December.

An extremely important question lurks behind the debate: What do we mean when we call ourselves a “multicultural” society?

The prevailing wisdom seems to be that multiculturalism means respect through non-specificity. In other words, in the name of equality, we will respect one another’s differences by not naming them.

Call me a skeptic, but I don’t think that ignoring cultural and religious differences puts us on the pathway of understanding and respect.

Technically, would not genuine multiculturalism acknowledge Christmas for the religiously centric “holy day” that it is? Why create a contextless, monocultural holiday in a vacuum apart from all the societal history that has led to its existence in the first place?

Multiculturalism, by definition, aims to respect all religious difference and diversity; but political-correctness, by contrast, breeds an innate fear of difference by suggesting that we all ought to be the same (or, at very least, not talk about our differences).

If you want to live in a culture that respects people’s choice to celebrate Dōngzhi, Hanukkah, or Yalda, then practice your own multicultural convictions by wishing your neighbours a “Merry Christmas.” And if they don’t celebrate Christmas, take the opportunity to listen and learn about their traditions.

Wishing someone a “Happy Holidays” for Christmas makes as little sense as offering them a “Season’s Greetings” during Ramadan.

Our society’s supposedly liberal, egalitarian effort to be cosmopolitan and multicultural is unmasked as a rather spineless platitude when we neuter days of cultural significance of their religious, historical basis.¹

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1. This post originally appeared as a letter to the editor on the website of the London Free Press on December 20, 2011 [↩]