"Merry Christmas" Beats "Happy Holidays" In Actual 2005 Consumer Usage

We've seen a lot of comments both pro and con about getting people to stop saying "Merry Christmas" and replace it with something more inclusive, like "happy holidays." I don't know about you, but this sudden focus this year, sounds like someone decided to make this a part of the liberal agenda this year. I'm not crying conspiracy here, but doesn't seem awfully strange that this one came out of left field the way it did this year?

What's also clear is that it's not the American public in general that's pushing this. We've seen several polls that show that most people prefer to use "Merry Christmas" rather than "happy holidays" and that people are reacting to the negative publicity merry Christmas has been receiving by saying it more this year. Some places are going out of their way to actively change Christmas customs.

But all that's just poll data - reporting on how people say they are behaving, not actually what they are doing.

Today, a study was released showing how people are actually acting. It's from Gift Baskets Deluxe and reports on how many people actually used the term Christmas in their gift cards sent through that company's websites as compared to last year.

The answer? 66% of senders used the term "Christmas" in their gift cards this year, a 57% increase over the 42% last year.

And this is also consistent with packages sent through their Corporate Gift Baskets site, where, since the gift is going into a more diverse environment (where the sender doesn't know the beliefs of everyone on the receiving end) people will be more likely to use a more PC-like term like "happy holidays".

Not true! They reported that 65% of corporate gift givers used the term "Christmas" on their cards, up from 42% last year.

You can read the full study summary here.

I don't know about you, but from what I'm seeing, this is a cause that's not sitting well with the American public. The liberals may want to look for another axe to grind...

Technorati tags: Christmas, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Politics, Liberals, Conservatives, Christ, Survey, Freedom Of Speech