Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays? New polling shows Americans are pretty much split down the middle on which greeting is most appropriate this time of year.
"Half the country (is) saying we should... call it Christmas and say Merry Christmas and kind of hang on to the explicitly Christian part of the holiday, and half the country (is) saying 'Well, even if most of us are Christians, we should kind of have our rhetoric match the changing reality, out of respect for pluralism, out of respect. It's okay, we'll say happy holidays,'" said Robert Jones, CEO of Public Religious Research Institute.
His team also broke it down along political lines:
- 66 percent of Democrats say "Happy Holidays" is better.
- 67 percent of Republicans say stores should greet customers with "Merry Christmas."
- 48 percent of Independents agree with Republicans.
Nearly early 90 percent of Americans say they're celebrating Christmas this year, but not everyone sees it as a religious holiday.
"About 40 percent of the country says it's a very religious holiday for them. Another 30 percent of the country says it's a somewhat religious holiday and then about a third of the country says they celebrate it but it's not really a religious holiday for them," said Jones. (Read More)
