‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays’? Everyone has Trump on the brain

Donald Trump promised to bring “Merry Christmas” back and on his first Noel as president he seems to have done that — and more.

Americans were already in a longstanding debate about whether there was a war on Christmas, but Trump’s presidential battle cry about the greeting appears to have made people even more deliberate about what they say in December. And whether that means they feel more liberated, more hesitant or merely in a knot of mental machinations at the moment before a potential greeting exchange, they often all share one common thing, somewhere in their brain: Donald J. Trump.