False Dichotomies

For some strange reason I was just thinking about the "War on Christmas". I know that it's a bit weird that I'm still thinking about this on New Year's Eve, but it happens. I was just pondering how silly it is that someone would be that upset over which holiday someone chose to tack on to their normal generic well-wishing. Especially in the case of retail employees. I've been a retail employee, and let me tell you, they don't give a fraction of a shit what holiday you celebrate. All they want is for you to get the fuck out of their line so they can ring up the next person's crap and get one step closer to getting the hell out of there.

For that matter, where in all of this is the consideration for the person who's actually doing the well-wishing? Maybe the store policy dictates that you use a generic "Happy Holidays", but what if that particular cashier is really excited about Hanukkah? Does it really matter that much? It was this particular line of thinking that brought me to wonder what might happen if you just chose a holiday at random? Wouldn't that be fun? I'd love to see the looks on those self-righteous fox-news-indoctrinated faces when some random Wal-Mart lackey wished them a Happy Kwanzaa.

It was at this point that I think I had a visit from the spirit of Gary Gigax. That, or I'm just a really huge nerd. I thought back to my days as a retail cashier and wondered what would I do? I would choose a random holiday by dice roll. This wouldn't be hard to do. You could use any die, and assign any set of holidays to its various sides. Depending on what types of die you have available you can choose any number of holidays. I think six is an easy start. You have three major holidays (x-mas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa) as well as a handful of other made up holidays, and maybe an extra space for "no holiday" or "generic greeting". You could design your die in a number of ways. If you're an industrious type you can get a blank cube and paint your own symbols for each holiday. If you're not into paint you can just make a chart, and then assign a number to each holiday and roll against that. If you're already a tabletop gaming nerd you've already figured most of this out. I came up with my own chart and my own set of holidays, but you're more than welcome to come up with your own. Here's what I've got:

1 - Generic (just say "Have a good day" or something like that without mentioning a holiday)
2 - Happy Hanukkah
3 - Happy Kwanzaa
4 - Merry Christmas
5 - Happy Holidays
6 - Happy Festivus (or Newtonmas, or Squidmas, or whichever alterna-holiday you prefer)

This is a pretty simple tool that can potentially annoy any number of possible holiday revellers. You may not at any given interaction have time to conveniently roll a die, so I suggest always pre-rolling when you get a chance, and then storing your results for the next person you see. I admit that this could lead to potentially negative reactions. People aren't going to understand the random nature of your holiday well-wishing so I would suggest either being prepared for some indignant reactions or just ignoring the die-roll in case you think the skinhead in red braces and combat boots might stomp you a new asshole for wishing him a Happy Hanukkah.

I'll admit that this is probably not a totally original idea. Gamers tend to use random dice rolls to make all kinds of decisions. Still, I think this could be an interesting new weapon in our War on Christmas arsenal.