The most wonderful time of the year can turn into a real headache for retailers who use the wrong seasonal greeting with customers. Just ask Starbucks, which ran into such trouble last year for changing its “Christmas” cup to basic “holiday” red. (This year, the coffee giant had customers design its wintry looks.)
But Bob Phibbs, the expert behind The Retail Doc blog, says there is only one greeting retailers should be using this time of year: “Happy Holidays!”
Feeling peeved by that suggestion? Phibbs, the son of a preacher, is sympathetic.
“If you are a devout Christian, I understand ,” he writes. “To you, there is no other greeting more necessary than ‘Merry Christmas.’… And if you are someone around my age, you’ve probably grown up always saying, ‘Merry Christmas!’ Why would you change now?”Phibbs, however, argues that there is one reason to embrace the more secular greeting: You want all of your customers to feel welcome “every time they walk in the store,” he says, noting that about a quarter of the country does not identify as Christian — a sizeable population you don’t want to alienate or annoy.
“Greeting customers with ‘Merry Christmas’ 100 percent of the time is wrong because it excludes 25 percent of them,” Phibbs says. “You want to cater to every customer, those who will buy their presents with cash and those who pay credit, those who can afford the best and those who cannot, those who celebrate Christmas and those who do not.”
And, Phibbs adds, if a customer wishes you or your sales team a Merry Christmas (or Happy Hanukkah) and you don’t celebrate the holiday, there’s only one, miffed-free response: “Why, thank you! Same to you.”
Not convinced? For a counterpoint to Phibbs’ argument, check out Paul Jankowski, a contributing writer at Forbes, who pointed out in 2014 that some major national companies (including Gap) have in recent years made a point of switching to “Merry Christmas,” especially in visual merchandising, nixing “Happy Holidays.”
