A Love Letter Written Into The Season

I do not know when a greeting became a test of loyalty.
I do not remember the moment warmth turned into a line drawn in the snow.
I only know that somewhere along the way, we stopped hearing the heart behind the words.

Merry Christmas.
Happy Holidays.

Listen to them. Not with defenses raised. Not through headlines or comment sections. But with the ears of someone who still remembers what kindness sounds like.

One is spoken from faith and tradition, carried through generations like candlelight passed hand to hand.
The other is spoken from inclusion, offered to a world that knows December does not look the same for everyone.

Neither was born to wound.
Neither was meant to erase.

And yet here we are, arguing with strangers. Correcting cashiers. Hardening our hearts over phrases spoken by people we will never know.

People with no power over us.
People who owe us nothing.
People who were simply trying to be polite.

What are we defending so fiercely against someone offering goodwill?

Your faith is not weakened because someone greets the season differently.
Your belonging is not threatened because someone speaks from another place of meaning.

A heart does not lose its truth by allowing another heart to speak.

We were never meant to trade kindness for correctness.
We were never meant to turn generosity into a cultural standoff.

A greeting is not a demand.
It does not require agreement.
It does not rewrite belief.

It is a small human gesture that says, I wish you well in this moment we share.

When someone says Merry Christmas, they are not issuing a command.
They are offering joy in the language that shaped them.

When someone says Happy Holidays, they are not denying anything sacred.
They are making room.

And love has never been afraid of room.

The conflict survives only because we have been taught to hear threat where there is none. To mistake difference for disrespect. To confuse inclusion with loss.

But peace was never meant to be this fragile.

So say what is true for you.
Say it freely.
Say it kindly.

And when someone offers you the other, receive it. Not as a challenge. Not as erasure. But as what it has always been.

A kindness.

Because the season was never about winning the right words.
It was about remembering how to meet each other without armor.

Merry Christmas, if that is your blessing.
Happy Holidays, if that is your embrace.

And may we finally remember that goodwill was never something we had to fight over.

 

Lots of Love - Thîrteen