The thanks giving and Christimas rallies are going hand in hand for Trump.If U.S. President-elect Donald Trump were to be believed, his election last month has changed the way Americans celebrate Christmas.
“We’re gonna start saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again,” he told a rally in Michigan last week. By this week, Mr. Trump’s ‘thank you’ rallies have added an explicit Christmas fervour to it. Standing against the backdrop of Christmas trees and lights, Mr. Trump told supporters in Wisconsin on Tuesday: “So when I started 18 months ago, I told my first crowd in Wisconsin that we are going to come back here someday and we are going to say ‘Merry Christmas’ again… Merry Christmas.
So, Merry Christmas everyone. Happy New Year, but Merry Christmas.”Some have linked the decline of Christmas greetings to President Barack Obama’s rise. The Obamas wished ‘happy holidays’ on greeting cards always, though the President has wished Americans a “Merry Christmas” every year, in his weekly address ahead of December 25.
“Thank you, everybody. Mele Kalikimaka,” Mr. Obama said on Friday, concluding what could be his final presser in office, with the Hawaiian greeting for ‘Merry Christmas.’
Presidents before him too have used ‘happy holidays’ or ‘season’s greetings’ and avoided mentioning ‘Christmas’ on cards — John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover, for instance.
Mr. Trump had kept the issue at the centre of his campaign since the Christmas of 2015, when a controversy erupted over Starbucks avoiding Christmas symbols on its cups as it used do to earlier. Joshua Feuerstein, an evangelical social-media personality, launched a YouTube campaign against Starbucks, which has been viewed 17 million times.
