“Merry Christmas!” It was the standard December greeting in the New Jersey town where I was raised. New Jersey is diverse as a whole, but it is made up of a patchwork of small towns, many of which have historically been ethnic enclaves. I took for granted that dried pasta had its own aisle at the grocery store, and when I moved to the Boston area as a young adult, I was shocked to have to hunt down spaghetti in the “ethnic” section. My classmates in the New Jersey public schools were mostly Catholic and mainline Protestant. Perhaps three-quarters were observant, and the rest were like me, Santa-and-Easter-Bunny secular Christians. There was one Jewish student in my grade, and during grade school each December her teacher invited her mother to our classroom to give a fun lesson about Chanukah and hand out dreidels and chocolate coins.
The first time I heard someone suggest that it was not polite to say “Merry Christmas” indiscriminately because not everyone celebrates Christmas, it was a revelation…