Happy holidays? A guide to inclusive season’s greetings
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A Personal Story:
A few Decembers ago, I found myself in a meeting of people interested in working on allyship skills where the facilitator posed the following icebreaker question: “What are your plans for the upcoming holidays?”
I knew this facilitator well enough to assume their intentions were to be inclusive. (After all, it was an allyship meeting, and at least they didn’t ask, “What are your plans for Christmas?”) But their question made me feel left out, and I struggled trying to figure out what I could say without sounding like a total grinch.
I’m Jewish. Chanukah had already passed by then. As participants shared about their Christmas traditions, I was distracted. I was trying to figure out what to say while simultaneously managing my frustrations about folks seemingly being unaware of the privilege of the country shutting down for their most important holidays. (For example, Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the Jewish year, isn’t a day off for most workplaces or governments.) And I know I’m not alone: staff across my clients who also don’t celebrate Christmas or have complicated relationships with it have shared similar experiences of exclusion with me.
Now, I’m not suggesting it’s not okay for people to talk about their Christmas traditions at work! But if the facilitator had instead asked, “What's something coming up in your life this winter that you're looking forward to?” or, “What are you looking forward to doing during our week off later this month since the office is closing?” I would have been able to share about my fun plans for ice skating and drinking hot cocoa with my niblings,* and folks who had holiday plans would have been able to share about those, too, if they wanted to.
The Lie We’ve Been Sold:
The thing is, talking about Christmas isn’t the problem. Talking about holidays isn’t the problem, either. The problem is that we’ve been sold a lie: replacing the word “Christmas” with “the holidays” in our vocabularies isn’t the magic inclusion bullet we’ve been led to believe it is.
Why? Because it’s performative, not substantive. That means it isn’t backed by an actual shift in meaning, and can therefore unintentionally exclude/alienate folks. Here’s how:
The thing that makes “Merry Christmas!” or “What are your plans for Christmas?” weird things to ask/say to everyone indiscriminately isn’t the word “Christmas.” It’s not inherently an offensive word, so replacing it with a different word isn’t going to solve the underlying problem.
The Problem:
The reason “Merry Christmas!” is a weird thing to say to everyone is that Christmas isn’t a universally merry (or even significant) day for everyone. Christmas isn’t everyone’s holiday, but we live in a country that likes to pretend it is, and whose basic infrastructure is designed to support people observing Christian holidays.
Going along with the narrative that Christmas is everyone’s holiday (which I know you know isn’t true!) erases the experiences and identities of people who don’t celebrate it or don’t want to. And erasing people’s identities and experiences detracts from our efforts to make our organizations more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
Consider folks who:
Don't celebrate any holidays at this time of year
Have sadness (challenging relationships with their families, major losses, etc) associated with winter holidays
Struggle to get the time off that they need to observe their meaningful holidays because the country (institutionally and/or culturally) doesn’t shut down for them, and/or they don’t actually have a holiday or holidays to celebrate during the time you’re referring to.
Even if time off is technically available for them to observe their major holidays, schools, workplaces, and federal institutions don’t observe them, so there’s a lot of added stress to taking PTO to meet religious obligations.
And many other very valid reasons December can be a super rough or just uneventful time of year for people!
We need and want these people to feel included by us and in our organizations! We don’t want to further contribute to their feelings of exclusion and otherness.
So how are we supposed to make small talk?
Some Solutions:
Here’s what I suggest for individual interactions:
(These also happen to be two of my favorite DEI practices - use them all year!)
Say what you mean. We often speak in generalizations because we want to avoid saying the thing we really mean. (Read more about this in my blog post about why we need to stop referring to individual people as “diverse” here.) But speaking in generalizations often leads us to speak inaccurately, and sometimes even harmfully. When you say, “Happy Holidays!” in late December, what holidays are you referring to?** There have been years when Chanukah falls in mid-November. And people usually stop saying “happy holidays” and start saying, “happy New Year” on December 26th, but Kwanzaa runs from Dec 26 - Jan 1 every year! So if you want to wish someone a “Merry Christmas” because you know they celebrate Christmas, do it. If you want to say, “Merry Christmas to those who celebrate” to a mixed group of people, go for it. As we’ve discussed, “Christmas” isn’t a bad word. But if you’re going to do this, make sure you actually know who you’re talking to. Which leads me to my next suggestion:
Don’t make assumptions about people’s identities. If you know what holiday someone celebrates and that they feel good about it, I see no reason not to ask them what their plans are! But if you don’t already know, ask your colleagues about what this time of year is like for them, so you can engage respectfully. This might include questions like;
What is this time of year like for you?
What are you going to be doing during our winter break? I’m so excited to have the week off.
Do I have it right that you celebrate Kwanzaa? I’d love to know what your plans are for the holiday if you’re up for sharing.***
I saw in your calendar that you’re taking the afternoon off next week to get ready for Chanukah. Can I ask you about that? I’m curious to learn about what your Chanukah traditions are! (And is “Happy Chaunkah!” the right thing to say to you?)***
And here’s what I suggest for larger team- or organization-wide communications:
Own the truth of what’s happening! The office is closing because Christmas is a federal holiday. Instead of indiscriminately wishing everyone happy holidays, you can:
Say what you mean, and be equitable about it: Depending on the makeup of your company, wish a merry Christmas to those celebrating. Pair this with thoughtfully acknowledging the important holidays of other staff at your company throughout the year. And as you do this….
Keep it actionable, not performative: Remind your staff of other holidays taking place around this time, and encourage them to make sure they don’t schedule important meetings or deadlines in ways that conflict with those holidays so that people who observe them can do so meaningfully. (Read more about this, and how to maintain this practice throughout the year, here.) If neither of these last two options feel appropriate for your workplace, try this next one:
Lean into the secular part: Wish everyone a restorative, warm, cozy day/days off.
So, there you have it: A zero-cost initiative to make your workplace more inclusive that’s about shifting something you’re already doing, not adding work to your plate.
These kinds of small actions can make a big difference in someone’s day. As we work together to face global and national systemic obstacles, small actions can feel trivial. But our big structural work isn’t going to have the impact we need it to if we’re not treating each other with kindness as we engage in it.
Have questions about applying this guidance in your specific context? Please reach out.
*While we’re talking about inclusive language, “niblings” is a gender-neutral term for the children of one’s siblings (whether biological or chosen family). People use it to refer to non-binary relatives and also to a mixed-gender group of nieces and nephews.
**And furthermore, when your company re-named your end-of-year party a “Holiday Party” instead of a “Christmas Party,” what holidays did you decide to plan that party around?
***Note that neither of these questions/conversation starters involve asking someone to explain their holiday to you. That’s what Google is for. Your colleagues aren’t paid to teach you about world religions, so don’t ask them to.
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