So those Christians spend December berating retail workers being paid so little they're forced to rely on food stamps for saying the wrong thing while imagining themselves free speech warriors.

As a kid, I always thought it was because it was shorter than "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year," which was very common until the proliferation of "Happy Holidays" where I grew up. I have to imagine retail employees were glad to cut in half their mandatory goodbye phrase regardless of the reason.