Friday 18 December 2009

Merry Everything to Everyone

I'm not, for reasons that I shall I keep to myself, the biggest fan of Christmas but since having children I've become a lot less resistant to it. I am, though, very careful not to wish everyone I meet a Merry Christmas. When you work internationally you come across people with wildly varying religious beliefs (I know a Satanist, a Calvinist, a Lutheran and a couple of Quakers for example) and wishing them all a "Merry Christmas" can often be a little too broad a brushstroke. My first job was stamping passports for the Home Office back in the mid-1980s and one of my colleagues was a really nice but quite naive guy called Andrew who once uttered the immortal phrase "And a Merry Christmas to you, Rabbi". The dressing down he got from our boss was something I'll equally never forget.

I'm always impressed by parents who only celebrate Christmas "for the children" - both my sons have school friends who benefit from this generous of "belief-suspension" but the last thing I want to do is offend anyone, so from a business perspective I rarely wish anyone anything other than "seasons greeting" and I actually quite like the American "happy holidays" as it's designed to be inclusive.

This hardly goes anywhere near explaining why we don't send out corporate H3B Media Christmas cards but anyone reading this is more than entitled to regard as the nearest thing they'll get to one from us.

Happy holidays, have a great new year and may you enjoy your celebrations, whatever they are and whatever they are for.

Kevin

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