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Merry War on Xmas

by Bijan Parsia

“Merry war on Xmas” is my new season’s greeting. I love it.

However, this morning it occured to me that two classic “general” season’s greeting phrase, “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” had a rather amusing logical structure.


Happy Holidays = For all x, if x is a holiday, then (may) x be happy for you.

Season’s Greetings = For all x, if x is a greetingOfTheSeason, then I greet you with x

I’m not really happy with the quantification of “Season’s Greetings”. I suspect it might be substitutional rather than objectual. I.e., that instead of committing me to a domain with all the greetings in it, it might only commit me to saying all the greetings. In other words, “Season’s Greetings” is more like a macro.

(Ok, Zoe thought it was funny! What’s wrong with the rest of you!)

(No tagline for this one…it was stolen by the Christmas Ninjas. “Make lots of money through stealth in shadow.” should be the new motto of this company.)

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 23rd, 2005 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Goofy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Merry War on Xmas”

  1. Jordan Says:
    December 24th, 2005 at 1:25 am

    I think there’s a common interpretation of ‘Happy Holidays’ that’s more inline with the form of ‘Season’s Greetings’:

    For all x, if x is such that celebrates(greetee, x), then may happyFor(x, greetee) hold.

    Which means the thing (‘holiday’) you’re quantifying over is relative to the greetee, rather than some agreed upon domain of holidays (since that’s clearly contentious—even if only by idiots—Oreilly: ‘What?? Kwanza is not a holiday!’). Plus, there’s a prevailing assumption that you only celebrate one holiday, so it seems plausible to make the happyness of the holiday relative to the person being greeted too.

    What’s neat is that the truth value of the consequent, happyFor(x, greetee), is completely dependent upon the person being greeted; you’re only wishing for it to be true :)

  2. bijan Says:
    December 24th, 2005 at 1:26 am

    Aditya and I, in IM, arrived at a different version for Season’s Greetings.

    (Assume bijan and you are logical constants…replace with the appropriate parties)

    For all x, y such that Holiday(x), OccursAfter(x, dec 1), OccursBefore(x, jan 2), greetingFor(y, x), wishes(bijan, you, y)

    I suspect the start date is a bit flexible (e.g., Dec 12 is prolly fine, may even be better). To make this into Happy Holidays, you need to kill he greetingFor, then muck with the wishes operator…which really isn’t a predicate, but a propositional attitude. So we have an intensional structure no matter what.

  3. bijan Says:
    December 24th, 2005 at 1:35 am

    Good point, Jordan. It’s probably the case that you aren’t meant to be doing all for everyone, but the appropriate ones for each. I think I still tend to think of them as substitutes for “Merry Xmas and Happy New Year”, which is what they replaced for me. How Xmas centric of me! Maybe not…I think everyone gets a Happy New Year.

    So, to update the updated one:

    For all x, y such that Holiday(x), OccursAfter(x, dec 1), OccursBefore(x, jan 2), holidayFor(x, you), greetingFor(y, x), wishes(bijan, you, y)

    Or to get more in touch with my inner me:

    For all x, y such that Holiday(x), OccursAfter(x, dec 1), OccursBefore(x, jan 2), holidayFor(x, you), notLoathedBy(x, bijan), greetingFor(y, x), wishes(bijan, you, y)

    Add your own codicil (e.g., notInvolvingAnimalSacrafice(x), etc.)

  4. Jen Says:
    December 24th, 2005 at 7:04 am

    For all x such that thinksThisIsFunny(x), HasTimeToComeUpWithMoreLogicStatementsToCarryOnThisDiscussion(x), x not Jen, lame(x)

  5. bijan Says:
    December 24th, 2005 at 8:05 am

    I’ll note that the fact of jen’s post contradicts what jen said in that post! I was actually studying such sentences in my prior thesis topic.

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