Last week, NBC’s Thursday’s sitcoms, at least Community, 30 Rock, and The Office, ran their Christmas episodes. The ads for it included soundbites such as, “It’s not Happy Holidays. It’s Merry Christmas.” I was curious what they were going to do with that.

When I watched the episodes on Hulu last week, I wasn’t even thinking about that soundbite. Each episode was very explicitly about Christmas, but they focused on family, granted they were all in their own customary irreverent way, but there was no religious element to it.

A few weeks ago, I characterized Christmas as secularized version of a Christianized version of a pagan holiday, that is exactly what they presented on those shows. So why not Happy Holidays?

If the reason is to recast the holiday as purely secular in America, then yes, it’s Merry Christmas!