Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, It Makes a Difference

How a DNA test helped me rethink my December greetings.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I went to run errands in a town near where I live in rural Wisconsin. It was an exciting time to be out and about; people were cheerfully preparing for one of the big family events of the year. Every person I interacted with wished me a “Happy Thanksgiving” or asked me about my plans.

I don’t usually think twice about this sort of small talk, it is just a way that people reach out, and I generally appreciate it. People connect over shared experience, sort of like talking about the Green Bay Packers or the weather; it is part of our social glue.

But what if instead of fostering connection and community, a greeting like this unintentionally signals the assumed supremacy of one group of people over another? If I were a white-passing Indigenous person, I think the week before Thanksgiving in Wisconsin could be a very different experience for me.

I might consider the experience of December in rural Wisconsin from the point of view of a non-Christian. For those of us who were raised Christian, all the Christmas decorations and small talk reinforce our biggest holiday of the year and connect us together through shared culture. For non-Christians, December can be a constant reminder that many…