Bob, it's my understanding that the whole attempt to replace "Christmas" by "Holiday", or some other anodyne word, occurs at an official rather than an individual level. For example:
One of the most prominent Christmas tree controversies came in 2005, when the city of
Boston labeled their official decorated tree as a holiday tree, and the subsequent response from the
Nova Scotian tree farmer who donated the tree was that he would rather have put the tree in a
wood chipper than have it named a "holiday" tree.
In 2007, a controversy arose when a public school in
Ottawa,
Ontario planned to have the children in its primary choir sing a version of the song "
Silver Bells" with the word "Christmas" replaced by "festive".
... A controversy regarding these issues arose in 2002, when the
New York City public school system banned the display of
Nativity scenes ...
In the
United Kingdom there have been some controversies, one of the most famous being the temporary promotion of the phrase
Winterval for a whole season of events (including Christmas festivities) by Birmingham City Council in the late 1990s. This remains a controversial example of "Christmas controversy", with critics attacking the use of the word "Winterval" as being
political correctness gone mad.