In a video clip that made the rounds recently, first lady Jill Biden welcomed children to the annual White House toy drive. “Hi, happy holidays!” she called to the kids, one of whom called back, “Happy Christmas!”

“Happy Christmas,” Biden repeated. “Yes!”

It was a perfectly lovely moment until the culture warriors — in this case, right-wing culture warriors — decided to treat it as a win for their side and an embarrassing rebuke to the left.

“Epic response from a kid,” one conservative commentator gloated on X. “THERE IS HOPE FOR THE FUTURE!” cheered another. MAGA Voice, a social media account with 821,000 followers, crowed: “Jill Biden says ‘Happy Holidays’ and a child immediately corrects her.” The conservative group Catholic Vote exulted: “We are so back,” adding a cross emoji for good measure.

I realize that a lot of people (conservatives, mostly) regard the use of “Happy holidays” as a politically correct, anti-Christmas snub and a lot of other people (liberals, mostly) who think saying “Merry Christmas” is insensitive to non-Christians.

But there was nothing remotely anti-Christmas about the first lady’s greeting to the kids. She was standing in front of the East Room’s two glittering Christmas trees in a White House filled with Christmas decorations. Her response to the little girl who called out “Happy Christmas” was unhesitating: “Happy Christmas, yes!” Why exploit that sweet exchange to score a few cheap political points?

Admittedly, there is a certain breed of killjoy who diligently avoids calling Christmas by its proper name. Maybe some of that is fueled by anti-Christian bile, but mostly it stems from a misguided notion of courtesy — from the idea that showing respect for minorities requires snubbing the majority. Better to call the company shindig a “holiday” party, that thinking goes, than to risk offending the few non-Christian employees by calling it a Christmas party.

I am one of those non-Christians. Yet it has never occurred to me to take offense at being wished a merry Christmas. As an Orthodox Jew, I don’t celebrate the birth of Jesus or indulge in any of the trappings of that celebration — but I enjoy seeing my Christian friends and neighbors do so. Far from feeling uneasy as Christmas approaches each year, I feel reassured. And I feel grateful to live in a country where freedom of religion is a foundational principle, one that protects the Hanukkah menorah in my front window no less than it protects the Christmas tree in my neighbor’s.

Still, I can appreciate the impulse that leads many people to wish me “Happy holidays” at this time of year, either because they know I don’t celebrate Christmas or they aren’t sure. If their intention is to be friendly and inclusive, why would I take it amiss?

Yet some people can always find reason to be affronted.

“Please don’t wish me ‘Merry Christmas,’” the journalist Julia Ioffe snapped in a grouchy Washington Post column in 2018. “It’s wonderful if you celebrate it, but I don’t — and I don’t feel like explaining that to you.”

Ioffe, a secular Jew who immigrated to the United States from Russia, finds it “off-putting” to be wished a merry Christmas. She generally replies with a courteous “Thanks, you too” — but even that offends her because, she wrote, “now I’m pretending to celebrate Christmas. … It makes me feel like a stranger in my own land.”

That certainly isn’t how it makes me feel. Nor is it the way countless other Jewish immigrants and their children have felt about Christmas. Many beloved Christmas songs were composed by Jewish songwriters, several of them first-generation Americans. Irving Berlin (“White Christmas”) was born in Russia, for example. So were the parents of Mel Torme (“The Christmas Song”), while Eddie Pola (“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”) was the son of immigrants from Hungary.

Jewish songwriters (and this Jewish columnist) aren’t the only ones who have expressed an affinity for Christendom’s Dec. 25 holiday.

For Rabbi Benjamin Blech, an Orthodox Jewish scholar, what is precious about the Christmas season in America is how different it is from the world his parents came from. In their Polish village at the start of the 20th century, Christmas usually came with a frightful surge in antisemitism and attacks on local Jews.

But here in America, Jews are free to believe and worship as they please, Blech wrote in an essay titled “Is Christmas Good for the Jews?” So he has never been troubled by the yearly showering of Christmas spirit.

“Surrounded by Christmas celebrations, I have never had difficulty explaining to my children and my students that although we share with Christians a belief in God we go our separate ways in observance. … We differ in countless ways. Yet Christmas allows us to remember that we are not alone in our recognition of the Creator of the universe. We have faith in a higher power.” Blech revels in the Yuletide spirit. “Call me naïve, but nowadays I really love this season.”

That’s my take, too.

So whether you wish me a merry Christmas or happy holidays, whether you belong to America’s large Christian majority or one of its small non-Christian minorities, whether you attend midnight Mass or kindle Hanukkah lights — however you celebrate these days, may they be bright, uplifting, and peaceful.

And politics-free.