Almost 30 percent of respondents who grew up in Christian households said they avoid saying “Merry Christmas” to strangers in case it offends them. But 92 percent of respondents who grew up in non-Christian households said they are not offended. Of course, that does leave an 8 percent minority who are offended.
“Institutions, governments, businesses, sometimes they make a lot of effort trying to come up with, I guess we could call it a politically correct approach, to passing on greetings. It seems a strong majority tend to just use Merry Christmas,” said Andrew Enns, an executive vice-president at Leger, in a Postmedia article.
About 70 percent of people are more likely to greet others with “Merry Christmas” than “Happy Holidays.”
More than half of the approximately 1,500 respondents said they grew up culturally or religiously Catholic. About 40 percent said religion is important in their household today. Respondents in Atlantic Canada (49 percent) and Manitoba and Saskatchewan (48 percent) were least likely to say religion is unimportant.
Most Canadians, 58 percent, want to keep the public holiday schedule centred on Christmas, as it’s a Canadian tradition. Another 24 percent said Canada should have additional public holidays for other cultural traditions. Six percent said there should be no religion-based holidays, and the remaining 12 percent didn’t express an opinion on the matter.
The youngest age group was more interested in changing the season, at 38 percent. The oldest wanted to keep Christmas unchanged, at 69 percent.
Leger weighted results according to age, gender, and region to try to ensure a representative sample of the population.
