It has become apparent that last year’s effort to broker the great Chris-oliday truce has been deemed a failure. Like most grass-roots efforts, I chalk it up to not getting to enough ears and eyes on the cause.

I again will try to finally end the rift that has and is continuing to plague an otherwise wonderful time to be alive. We will get to the truce later.

Why, though, has the rift started?

I believe most people do not enjoy things, they just look forward to the next thing. In late August, before the temperature ever thinks about sinking below 90, Halloween candy occupies store shelves. Before Halloween arrives, its already onto Thanksgiving.

Not enough attention is paid to what we call Turkey Day. What occupies most minds are the Friday sales, which have morphed into Thursday night sales. Soon stores will market super-cluck-cluck sales on Thursday at 11 in the morning as an alternative to watching football.

So by the week after Thanksgiving much of the holiday rush has ended with several weeks to spare. What better to do than drive the wedge deep? A divided nation is being divided during a season of love and family.

So what a better way to occupy the time than to argue over whether a Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays, or Happy Sunshine Day is given as a greeting. In one corner are the Christmas people. I love them all. I love their Christmas decorations and Christmas lights. I don’t love their snide social network posts pointing out that it is a Christmas tree.

It’s not a Christmas tree, it’s probably a Fraser fir or blue spruce. It has become the symbol for Christmas and looks lovely lighted with a tree skirt and some toys scattered beneath. Does it matter if someone calls it a holiday tree? A Hanukkah bush? Or a desert cactus? Let people call it what they want and respect that they call it whatever they want. Is it hurting you that someone has a Saturn Star Tree in his living room?

Now, the truce.

Christmas people will agree to accept any greeting from Thanksgiving until Dec. 24. Happy Holidays. Happy Day of the Sun. Happy Breathing Day. Whatever. They can give any greeting they want, but cannot get bent out of shape because a 20-year-old who is home from college working at a cash register says, “Happy holidays.”

For my Happy Holidays friends, accept a Merry Christmas if it is offered. Return the greeting however you feel appropriate. On Dec. 25 — since the 25th is the federal holiday known as Christmas — it is agreed that Merry Christmas greetings are warranted. Just as one says Happy New Year’s on Jan. 1, everyone may say Merry Christmas on the 25th. But just as no one says Happy New Year on Dec. 16, neither should Merry Christmases be required before the 25th.

Everyone should be tickled to death that we are greeting each other at all. The country has so many reasons for real divisions, is the prudent path to simply create another reason?

These weeks should be filled with joy, singing, family and hugs. It should be a time to celebrate life and to help those less fortunate. It’s a time to touch a heart or two.

What it’s not a time for is to squabble over the symbolic name of a soon-to-be-dead Fraser fir.

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Sean P. Murphy is web editor. He can be reached at smurphy@vicksburgpost.com.