Thursday 24 December 2015

Which States Prefer to Say ‘Happy Holidays’ or ‘Merry Christmas’?

The longest-running battle in the goofy, cable-news-concocted “War on Christmas” has been over whether people should say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.”
Bill O’Reilly made the latter phrase a bugaboo for millions of American viewers who say they take offense at the ubiquity of its holiday-neutral tone—especially when such wording shows up at their favorite corporate retail outlet.
And Donald Trump has made it a campaign promise that when he is president, Americans will only say “Merry Christmas”—none of that secular, liberal “holiday” junk.
But what do average Americans actually prefer to say?
Using geo-tagged Twitter data from across the U.S., data researchers for online artificial Christmas-tree seller Treetopiaattempted to determine which holiday greeting is the most popular in each state.
Unsurprisingly, it is the so-called Bible Belt states that overwhelmingly prefer “Merry Christmas,” while highly populated coastal blue states are wont to say “Happy Holidays.”

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