Travel back to the olden days of the 20th Century. People around the country celebrate their own holidays in their own ways and don’t think too much about it. Merry Christmas they would wish each other. Happy Hanukkah then became more popular. By 1966, they had added Happy Kwanzaa to the list.

Eventually, a few folks started to say Happy Holidays. After all, New Year’s came a few days after Christmas, and typically was pretty soon after Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, so it seemed to make sense to lump everything together. People then started saying Seasons Greetings. Isn’t that interesting? You don’t hear too many people saying Seasons Greetings to each other in July, but Summer is still a season, isn’t it? The years went by and people began adapting to the changes around them.

Then came a terrible development for the nations children…Christmas Break had vanished! Well, no, it hadn’t literally vanished. Luckily for them it was just replaced by a Winter Break, a Winter Holiday or a December Holiday. Potentially even more frightening was the recent news that Christmas Trees had been replaced by Holiday Trees. Then we learned they were the same thing. Phew!

So, on Winter Break, a few weeks before Christmas people began picking up their Holiday Trees. They began displaying their Menorahs in anticipation of Hanukkah (or maybe even Chrismukkah). And they began putting up their Kinaras and other decorations for Kwanzaa.

And now as we celebrate the special days that mark the end of 2005 the use of the all encompassing, and vigorously promoted, Happy Holidays will get you boycotted faster than a child can open a wrapped gift.

With every adult and poor child now thoroughly confused as to how they exactly are to express their joy of the season, the inevitable next step has been taken: the ringing in of the Season of WHATEVER.

No more worrying about offending anyone with your warm wishes…just call the season Whatever. Merry. Happy…Whatever! Shout it in the streets, no one will sue you, no one will boycott you, no one will be excluded. Whatever is open ended. It’s safe. It’s whatever you want it to be. No more worrying about what cards to send people or what to hang up in your office now that Whatever is here.

So rest easy this Chris…this Hanu…this Kwan…this, this WHATEVER.

This post was created in 2005 by A.W.M., a staffer at Pacific Ink. I came across it the other day, got some good laughs while reading, and decided to dust if off and share with you. Enjoy!