It’s a nearly impossible feat to write an email to a large group of people in the month of December. This is because inevitably, the month of December is a holiday month. The minute Thanksgiving ends, or let’s be honest, the minute Halloween ends, stores change their décor to a red and green theme, local radio stations begin blasting holiday music, a medley of mostly Christmas music with the occasional snow-themed anthem thrown in. And it’s okay. The United States, despite the naïvité of people who believe that the separation of church and state exists, is a country centered around large Christian holidays. So December inevitably is the Christmas month, or as my more woke friends say, the holiday month.
But back to the email problem. If, in your email, you don’t address the fact that it is a holiday month, you come off as a total Ebenezer Scrooge type who is in denial of the festive sentiments of the general public. Even though I myself have mixed feelings about Christmas because of a combination of a) childhood trauma and b) a severe dislike of Christmas songs, I try my best not to expose this fact to the world.
But at the same time, one cannot begin an email with “Merry Christmas!” No matter what my Trump-supporting uncle says about the glorious Donald making it safe to say “Merry Christmas” again, the fact of the matter is that saying only “Merry Christmas” negates anyone who does not celebrate that holiday, and that’s always been the case. Even if people who don’t celebrate Christmas are in the minority, that still doesn’t change this fact. I may be in the minority of people who loathe all Christmas tunes, but my friends still try to not play them when I’m around.
One could take the strategy that my middle school, a deeply problematic institution that liked to hide behind a rainbow-colored facade of woke-ness, took. It wrote “Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa!” at the beginning of any December emails. Ah yes, the three major world religions, Christianity, Judaism, and the African people of all faiths who celebrate Kwanzaa.
Photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg
As a Hindu, I acknowledge that the religion I belong to is complicated and I don’t expect people to preface their December emails with “Happy Dhanu Sankranti and Geeta Jayanti!” Unfortunately, most Americans are not inclined to take a quick google search of “Hindu holidays 2020.” I mean, this entire country probably sees any brown person that’s not celebrating Christmas as a Muslim and probably thinks Hindi and Hindu are the same thing, not like there’s a big difference between a language and religion.
Another route one could pursue is the corporate method, which is just putting a quick “Happy Holidays!” before anything. However, I’ve always found this then negates the experience of anyone who is actually religious and celebrating something during this time, looking at the Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and other religious individuals of the world and being like “Ah, yes, you all are the same to me. Here, have a ‘Happy Holidays,’ even if your religion doesn’t have a major holiday that falls in December. Take it anyway.”
So what is one to do? I’ll tell you what I do: I just switch my email onto vacation mode for the month of December and ignore it altogether. What? Were you expecting a well-thought-out, nuanced answer to this question? The joke’s on you.
