Is it so offensive to hear "Happy Holidays"?

Exactly. We don't wish people Happy Halloween weeks before Halloween. We don't wish Happy Thanksgiving a month before. As shoppers we don't hear, "Happy New Year!" on Decemeber 2nd.

The entire season is jam packed full of holidays. Only say the specific holiday maybe a day or two before the big day and the big day. Otherwise it should be "Happy Holidays". That phrase has been around forever and was never a problem until Christians realized there were other celebrations during this time and those other people were saying it.

NDMA's response shows how many Americans think the US is the center of the universe. It also discounts that Thanksgiving and the New Year are also federal US holidays and no one gets angry about them being wrapped in the holiday well wishes. Next we'll have western fascists making up that the Chinese are angry at the Gregorian New Year and demand we stop calling it that. And a whole industry of bumper stickers and "non-fiction" books screaming about the topic. And suddenly, we'll be hearing "Happy NEW YEAR!" from angry idiots on the street beginning around December 2nd.

I would say nothing is inherently offensive. Individuals take offense at things because of what they bring to it in their own interpretation and you can't control that.

When I was growing up, I assumed Happy Holidays meant Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Years...later I mentally added Kwanzaa to that list. If I were in the UK, I guess I'd add Boxing Day. The holidays in the winter. Nothing more than that. Nobody celebrates them all, but it covers whatever you do celebrate.

I'm an atheist, the only ones I celebrate are the secular ones (Thanksgiving and New Years). And by celebrate, I mean eat and drink with friends.

The only people offended by a wish for happy holidays are those fundamentalist Christian god warriors who choose to take offense at the mere insinuation that happiness is possible without recognizing their one particular holiday to the exclusion of the many other non-Christian groups who also celebrate a holiday at or around the winter solstice.

I've never been a christian.

I've also never been offended at "merry christmas". I say it myself every year.

No atheist has ever "spit on" someone who said it. The whole "offended atheist" crap has been invented by the likes of bill o'reilly who are (as always) trying to invent and manufacture anger and outrage against the left and anything secular.

"Happy holidays" was a completely acceptable version of "merry christmas" fifty years ago and more....but the gullible theists now see it as an insult and a threat from the debbil.

Insanity.

Not at all.

Frankly, I'm offended whenever I encounter a Christian protesting because someone calls Christmas a holiday, because they (those Christians) are saying the birth of Christ was not a holy event.

"Holiday" comes from the Old English "hāligdæg" meaning "holy day".

Odd that christians always seem to take offence at this good humoured wish for their happiness.

But they sure do. I got chewed out a couple years back by an old lady for wishing her a happy holiday.

And that was after Christmas, I was thinking of the New Year.

I guess wanting them happy is somehow an insult.

Go figure,

I can understand why those who celebrate Christmas might be offended.

The same reason an atheist might be offended if somebody said "God bless"..

The question is, was the intent to offend? Probably not in either case so offense should not be taken in either case. But some people are sensitive!

You're expecting Christians to acknowledge that non-Christians have a right to happiness?? According to them, only Christians can be happy. Non-Christians don't deserve any good wishes. Christmas is about being mean, selfish and uncharitable. Get with modern times.

For the last few years, I have said that if anyone takes offense when I say "happy holidays," I will retract my well wishes and instead wish a miserable, bedbug infested holiday season.

I say have a great holiday season and I really mean it.

. I have no idea what people are and one of the atheists might spit at me or curse my mother if I said ''Merry Christmas."