I've written about this phenomenon before: When you're in a foreign country, when you notice something different, you're not sure whether it's unique to your location or if it applies to the country as a whole.
Recently I've had Christmas on my mind. No surprise, right? In the U.S., it's quite the secular holiday as well as a religious one. Still, at each company where I worked (or with each client) in the U.S., we made the effort to talk about this as "the holiday season." I even had a caller wish me a Happy Kwanzaa once--not something you hear much about in the rural parts of highly Catholic northern New Mexico, but I appreciated the thought nonetheless.
Up here, the holiday seems much the same. Also no surprise, right? Two sides of the same coin, right?
Well, maybe. Here, the local TV station has created this "elf" called "Murray Christmas," who is our "guide to Christmas television specials." They've been playing all week and will continue through the 25th. And they're all Christmas. Nothing about "the religions of Abraham meeting at this holiday season" or some such.
The TV station did acknowledge Hannukah with little 15-second public service announcement-type spots showing a menorah with lit candles (one for each night of the holiday). Since Kwanzaa hasn't started, I don't yet know whether it will be part of the "holiday season" up here. I also haven't seen anything acknowledging Native traditions at this time of year--but perhaps I don't know where to look.
My point is that people here--in Thunder Bay--seem less squeamish about saying "Merry Christmas" upfront. There's less hoop-de-do about separating Church and State. There's less concern for offending someone by wishing them a happy specific holiday.
However, that may be just Thunder Bay. In southern Ontario, which is a far more diverse part of the country, companies still have "holiday parties" at this time of year. Perhaps there, people feel more pressure to acknowledge other traditions.
So again, it's not just the country itself--it's where in the country you live. People in New York City might be very surprised by the prevalence of "Jesus is the reason for the season" in the rural parts of the country or in the American South. And once again, generalizations often aren't valid--including that one.
