DP and I were discussing this (kind of) last night, as he was saying that he's been saying "Happy Holidays!" or "happy Diwali!" (I know he's out of date, but we were in India during Diwali and he freaking loved being told that all the time) to people the last few days.
We're both Jewish. We both live in a country which is, for all intents and purposes a "christian" country where xmas is a major tradition, and we both respect that. Obviously, working in non-Jewish organisations, you do get involved in a lot of stuff - there's xmas lunches, secret santas, xmas parties, people handing out cards and wanting to put tinsel and decorations up, which is fine. It's to be expected. But it can be difficult because obviously it is very important for a lot of people, so much so that it seems incomprehensible to them that someone would not celebrate it. It does get tiring if, from end of November onwards until xmas you are asked almost daily "what are you getting for xmas? What are you doing for xmas? Have yo bought all your presents?" and on and on and on and when you respond that you don't celebrate it, you either get shocked silence, an apology(which is nice, but super rare - only one person has actually done this to me this year) or else people forcing stuff on you. And it's not like it's new people every time - one very lovely colleague took about 2 weeks to finally give up on asking me about my xmas plans. For e.g., one of DP's friends found out that he'd never had an advent calendar and was appalled and went and bought him one. Obviously, this was with the best of intentions, but he was so not bothered about never having one it hadn't registered.
I think what I'm trying to say is that I totally understand that it is something that is very important and wonderful to the vast majority of the population of the country I live in, but people must realise that not everyone is nutso about xmas, or even celebrates it. And this is not even just people who don't celebrate xmas for religious/cultural reasons, it could be other people who have, for e.g. lost a family member around this time, or find this time of year very upsetting. That small touch of sensitivity would be greatly appreciated. I have actually got quite upset at times as people are just so insistent on making you want to like it and participate. For e.g. my one manager is Muslim, and said that he didn't want tinsel put on his monitor. So what did people do? Be all "oh, that's okay, I can respect that". Nope. They put a picture of scrooge up on his office and made fun of him. Not cool.