I have watched with a certain amount of amusement the national debate [sic] over the correct words to label the passage of time when the Christians celebrate the birth of their lord, and the Jews celebrate the miracles of a small army rising up successfully against a larger army and the oil which should have lasted only one day but instead lasted eight, and when retailers all over America make it into the black.
I have always thought that we used "Happy Holidays" because it was more inclusive, AND ...
... because it is easier for me to spell. For some reason I always want to leave the "H" out of Christmas. And I have no idea how to spell Chanukah without some kind of help.
Which brings me to the first of two reasons this post is in the Search Engines category. I use Google to correct my spelling. If the application I am using doesn't support spell check, many times I will search for the term. If I spell it wrong, Google will generally provide a correct suggestion. It always knows what I am looking for, why shouldn't it know what I meant to spell?
In a sense it is an answer to the old question we used to ask our grade school teachers before the public Internet (and personal computers for that matter) existed: "How can I look up the spelling if I don't know how to spell it?"
Which brings me to the second thing I noticed, which was when the holiday gets spelled correctly the divider graphic between the results and the ads becomes topical. (i.e., instead of a line there is a little column of candles.) I am a huge fan of the Google logo graphics, but this is the first time I ever noticed a decoration other than the logo and the results logo.
I checked and they are politically correct, because when I misspell Christmas in my favorite way, they also suggest a correct spelling with only a line separating the ads from the results. When it is correctly spelled, the results page shows the candy cane separating the ads from the results.