Nearly half of Americans prefer 'Happy Holidays' greeting

A recent poll showed 49 percent of Americans now prefer the "Happy Holidays" greeting from stores and businesses. Photo by Rod Lamkey/Getty Images

According a recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, 49 percent of Americans say stores and businesses should greet customers with a "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas." That's up from 44 percent of Americans who preferred the holiday neutral greetings in 2010.

"Americans seem to be turning a corner on the appropriateness of more inclusive holiday greetings during December," said Robert Jones, CEO of PRRI.

The issue, however, has become increasingly political. Opinions split on party lines with 61 percent of Republicans favoring "Merry Christmas" and 58 percent of Democrats preferring the opposite. This year, Texas passed the Merry Christmas Bill to protect the "right to acknowledge traditional winter holidays on school grounds."

(The telephone and cell phone survey was conducted among 1,056 randomly selected adults from Dec. 4-12 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.)