Feature: Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays? debate of decades lingers in U.S.

The Americans remain split on whether one should say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy holidays" in the annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ though the December holiday is increasingly secular over the years.

"I say 'Happy Holidays'!" Michael C.Munger, a Director Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program, Department of Political Science, Duke University, emailed back to this Xinhua reporter when asked which way of greetings he prefers.

"Christmas is so secular that there is not much difference." Munger added. "People object to the 'War on Christmas.' But it's a religious holiday and the U.S. is a secular state, according to the Constitution."

The renown political science professor is among nearly the half Americans who favor more general "Happy Holidays" which lumps in other winter festivals including Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Year's Eve.

The country's opinion is almost divided evenly in deciding whether stores and businesses should greet customers with "Merry Christmas" or something that is not faith specific, according to a recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

Forty-seven percent of Americans say stores and other businesses should use "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" out of respect for people of non-Christian faiths, while 46 percent say they should not, the poll said. Those results have not changed much since 2010, when those numbers were 44 percent and 49 percent, respectively.

Americans'answers also reveal divides by religion, politics and age.

Two-thirds of young adults say "Happy Holidays" is best; whereas, a majority of seniors prefer "Merry Christmas."

A majority of white Evangelical Protestants and Catholics prefer "Merry Christmas," but a majority of the religiously unaffiliated and nonwhite Protestants say "Happy Holidays" is better.

Republicans and Democrats also are split with 67 percent of GOP supporters picking "Merry Christmas" and 66 percent of Democrats siding with "Happy Holidays".

For most of the U.S. history, most Americans say "Merry Christmas," with perhaps a "Season's greetings" thrown in sometimes, said Canadian historian Gerry Bowler, who just published his third book about the history of Christmas.

U.S. presidents helped start the "Happy holidays" trend by sending out annual holiday cards with nonreligious messages, Bowler said. Dwight Eisenhower had mailed non-denominational cards in the 1950s and "Happy holidays" enjoyed a brief and happy reign in 1990s in the U.S., more or less uncontested as the country's corporate greeting of choice.

The growing popularity of "happy holidays" has been derided as an attack on Christmas since Mid-2000s when John Gibson's book --"The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse Than You Thought" -- played right into the fears of many of the country's conservatives who see a broader persecution of Christians in America and political correctness run amok.

While Christmas is observed by the vast majority of Americans, an increasing number of people do not celebrate the December holiday as religious, according to the PRRI poll,

In 2005, 19 percent said it was not too religious compared to 27 percent this year. Age, political affiliation and religious affiliation are factors in whether Christmas is celebrated as a cultural holiday or a religious one.

However, the "War on Christmas" seems a bit more pitched than usual this year thanks to a powerful ally -- President-elect Donald Trump.

"We're all going to be saying 'Merry Christmas'," "If I'm president, you're going to see 'Merry Christmas' in department stores, believe me," Trump has said during his campaign.

"The 'War on Christmas' helps illustrate the cultural divide that was key to the 2016 election. Trump's emphasis on cultural threat, including his calls for people to say 'Merry Christmas', tapped into existing Republican angst, which heightened white evangelical concerns and mobilized support in largely white Midwestern states," Paul A. Djupe, associate professor of political science at Denison University and Andrew R. Lewis, assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, said in their recent article titled "Where To Say 'Merry Christmas' vs.'Happy Holidays' - 2016 Edition."

"The corresponding backlash from the left helps explain why more Democrats, secular people and Westerners grew in their preference for 'happy holidays.' As the 'War on Christmas' becomes increasingly political, perhaps we will see more Christmas skirmishes in the next few years," they concluded.

For U.S. retailers, however, it might not be a hard choice as reams of sophisticated consumer research showed that "Merry Christmas" is rarely the best way to sell the most stuff around the holidays.

"To say that you're only going to recognize one segment of your audience to the exclusion of others is not only bad socially and culturally, it is bad economically. You're limiting your audience and your customer base," said John Boiler,chief executive of 72andSunny, a Los Angeles ad agency that made Christmas ads this year for Target, Google, Comcast and Starbucks, in a story carried by the Chicago Tribune.

"You're going to make the choice that is more inclusive - if you're also into making the most money for your shareholders," said Boiler, who is single-handedly responsible for much of the corporate Christmas messaging in the country. Enditem