Does the greeting “Happy Holidays” have its roots in secularism?

While it’s commonly considered a secular and more inclusive alternative to Merry Christmas, the term Happy Holidays actually has Christian origins!

The word holiday was first used in the 1500s as a replacement for haliday, which was itself a replacement for the Old English haligdæg, all of which meant “holy day.” “Happy Holidays” was used as early as the 1840s and was once the preferred Christian greeting, as it referred not only to Christmas Day but the entire advent season, which stretches from the fourth Sunday before Christmas until Christmas Day.

However, as Christmas celebrations became increasingly commercialized and decreasingly religious in nature, Christians in the 1940s and 1950s who sought to reaffirm the holy part of the holiday turned to campaigns such as “put the Christ back in Christmas.” While stores initially went along with this return-to-religion, they quickly backtracked, realizing that by doing so they were losing business from non-Christian customers. Further attempts to fight against the secularization of Christmas, such as the popularization of the phrase “Jesus is the reason for the season,” didn’t gain much traction.

It wasn’t until roughly 2005 when Fox News anchor John Gibson published the book The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought, that Christmas’s lack of Christ was once again front-page news. The message was enthusiastically adopted by fellow Fox News anchors. In just one five-day period in 2005, the network ran fifty-eight segments on the scourge of “Happy Holidays.” President Donald Trump echoed these Fox fears, promising while campaigning to end the war on Christmas and declaring once elected that “We can say Merry Christmas again.”

While “Happy Holidays” began as a Christian greeting, it has metamorphosized into both an inclusive salutation and, apparently, a symbol of how our world has forgotten about Jesus. Funnily enough, Fox news doesn’t seem to have any issue with the phrase “Season’s Greetings,” which is likewise inclusive and secular. 

Is it more environmentally friendly to get a real or fake Christmas tree?

For those who put up Christmas trees, before questions such as “tinsel or ribbon?” and “angel or star?” can be answered, a much more fundamental query must be asked: real tree or artificial?

From an environmental standpoint, real trees seem like the obvious choice. Where artificial trees are made in factories from metals, plastics, and other manufactured materials, natural ones simply, well, grow from the ground. Where fake trees need to be disposed of in landfills (or potentially recycling plants if possible), real trees can be composted or burned. But it turns out the tree debate isn’t as cut and dried as it seems.

An extensive comparative life cycle assessment of an artificial versus a natural Christmas tree was done in 2010 by PE Americas for the American Christmas Tree Association. They examined quite a few environmental impact factors, including energy use, global warming potential, and acidification potential and a few end-of-life options for a real tree, including burning, landfilling, and composting. Their major conclusion? “The overall environmental impacts of both natural and artificial trees are extremely small when compared to other daily activities such as driving a car.”

Basically, no matter what kind of tree you get, the impact it has on the environment is nothing compared to everything else you do. 

If you’re still determined to minimize your tree-based environmental impact, the report points out that for the majority of factors considered, “the artificial tree has less impact provided it is kept and reused for a minimum between 2 and 9 years.” So, if you do choose a fake tree, make sure it’s one you’ll like for a few years at least.

But above all, try to buy a tree close to home! The environmental effects of your trip to the tree lot, or Walmart, far outweigh the effects of the tree itself.

Do the holidays cause heart attacks?

The holidays are a time for eating, drinking, and merriment, but could these festive times also be causing a myriad of myocardial infarctions?

A few different studies have looked at the temporal patterns of heart attacks and tried to find trends. A 2018 observational study from Sweden, called SWEDEHEART (Swedish Web System for Enhancement and Development of Evidence-Based Care in Heart Disease Evaluated According to Recommended Therapies), examined cases of myocardial infarction between 1998 and 2013. It found that the highest number of heart attacks occurred during the Christmas and midsummer holidays.

A 1999 study examined all cases of death caused by coronary artery disease from 1985 through 1996 in Los Angeles County and found an increase in heart attacks in December and January. Similarly, a 2004 study looked at cases of death in the United States that involved heart disease between 1973 and 2001 and found spikes on Christmas Day and New Years Day.

But why? What is it specifically about the holidays that seem to increase heart attacks? As Dr. Christopher Labos wrote for the McGill Office for Science and Society, there are a few theories. Cold weather may cause vasoconstriction, which can lead to decreased blood flow. Couple this with the vigorous activity of shoveling snow, and heart attacks are certainly possible. However, this theory doesn’t account for the fact that the holiday heart attack phenomenon has also been found in the southern hemisphere or the previously mentioned increase during midsummer holidays.

Another theory is that during the holidays people may delay medical care. If true, this could mean that Christmas season 2020 will see even more heart attacks than expected. Patients may be not only unwilling to interrupt their merriment to see a doctor but entirely unable to, as COVID-19 has pushed many hospitals to the brink of their capacity.

The most likely culprit seems to be our festive overindulgences in food and drink. A 2019 study found that “celebrating Christmas is associated with higher levels of total and LDL cholesterol and a higher risk of hypercholesterolemia in individuals in the general population.” As high cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease, this may explain some of the holiday heart attacks. Throw in some emotional stress, cold weather, and physical activity, and you’ve got a recipe for heart problems.

However, as Dr. Labos writes, the real question is what we do with this info. Christmas can’t be entirely canceled, and I highly doubt we’ll convince everyone not to overindulge this holiday season (I can’t even convince myself). At least this data can help us understand trends in myocardial infarctions, and maybe it will even convince some people to skip the extra serving of dessert. 

Despite the bizarre circumstances of this year, I hope you are able to find some peace, joy, and interesting things to read this holiday season. From mine to yours, Happy/Merry Christmas/Holidays!