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When will CIPD stop wishing me a Happy Christmas and start wishing me Happy Holidays?

Debbie Aarons

I have been a member of CIPD for over 20 years and every year the organization sends me an email to wish me a Merry Christmas.  For the past 5 years, I have sent a message directly to CIPD to ask that this message be changed to a more inclusive holiday greeting.  Clearly, this wish is not respected.

As an HR professional, I encourage employers to practice inclusive work practices.  Wishing people a Happy Holidays is inclusive as is Seasons Greetings.  Not all employees celebrate Christmas and I'm sure that this applies to CIPD members too.

I do not take offence each time someone wishes me a Merry Christmas as I appreciate that this is a message of goodwill.  However, this does apply to a professional body such as CIPD.  I see little value in writing about the value of inclusivity if you are not willing to practice this yourself.

Wishing all members of CIPD a peaceful and happy holiday season.

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  • I am very much an atheist, but still sang in my community choir in the cathedral at the weekend and sang in praise of god and baby Jesus. Just because I am not a Christian does not mean that I should refuse to take part. I may mutter under my breath at the lord's prayer and roll my eyes a bit at the nativity story, but I am part of the community and wish to celebrate with my fellow choristers.

    As I was a kid growing up in the Marches, I was English, living in England but attending school in Wales - I still celebrated St David's Day with gusto (more so than St George's Day actually) and I learnt to speak Welsh.

    I think organisations and people should embrace and reflect the cultures they are part of. Christianity is a part of British Culture and the CIPD is a UK organisation. We have a public holiday in the UK in celebration of Christmas - not for any other reason. Therefore, wishing people Happy Christmas at Christmastime is a perfectly valid greeting, reflecting the culture of many of its members. I hope they continue to do so.

    If you follow the CIPD on social media you will also notice they also regularly wish their members a Happy Hannukah, Divali and Eid Mubarak and acknowledge many other religious festivals too. This is the inclusive thing to do - recognising the festival and culture to be celebrated, not just sanitising it with "happy holidays" - which could be realistically said 8 times a year whenever we have a public holiday.
  • in reply to Lesley
    Humankind the world over has always developed fundamentally eerily-similar mythologies etc

    Eg
    en.wikipedia.org/.../The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces

    en.wikipedia.org/.../From_Ritual_to_Romance

    en.wikipedia.org/.../The_Golden_Bough

    TS Eliot in 'The Waste Land' drew heavily on Fraser and Weston as above. This fellow too was inspired by Eliot and the tradition he drew upon towards his own (more modest but none the worse for that) personal credo, recounted here over 50 years past on the radio but still fresh as a daisy and very topical indeed:

    www.evernote.com/.../snv

    Nowt specifically to do with HR perhaps, except we all ignore the 'human' dimension at our great peril - and, sadly, increasingly so IMHO.
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