Name the day or say nothing

Tomorrow a great many brands in the region will publish a sentence written to offend no one, and it will be read by no one.

Season's greetings. Happy holidays. Warm wishes for the festive period. The line has been through legal, through the regional office, through a colleague who was worried about Riyadh, and what came out names no day, no festival and no person.

In London that sentence is a courtesy. Here it is a hedge, and the reader can feel the hedge.

Look at who is actually on the other end of it. There are two readers, and they have nothing in common.

The first is a family in Dubai, or on a compound in the Eastern Province, or in Maadi, with a tree in the corner and a table booked for lunch tomorrow. They know exactly which day you mean. Season's greetings tells them you know too and chose not to say it, and they read the choice.

The second is a Saudi customer in Riyadh who does not keep the day and never asked you to. To them the same sentence is a greeting for something that is not happening, in the register of an airline, sent on a working Thursday. Nobody is offended. It is noise, and it takes half a second of a family's attention for nothing.

The hedge was written for a third reader, who does not exist: someone who might be either and has to be kept happy without being told which. No customer is that person. Every customer is one or the other.

So name the one person the message is for. If it is the family with the tree, say Merry Christmas, in the words they will say to each other, and mean it. If it is the customer who does not keep the day, say nothing at all, and let the quiet be the courtesy.

Both are more respectful than the greeting that hedged, because both were written for someone.