Happy Christmas. Just by writing those words from here, I feel like part of some samizdat press movement secretly sending out furtive greetings. For though we are told that 96 per cent of Americans will celebrate Christmas in some form or other this year, Christmas itself has become "the C word" - most definitely not politically correct and in some cases literally illegal.

Near where I live, the head of a high school has sent out a frantic memo to the editors of the student newspaper: "Be careful that you don't associate the upcoming holiday with any particular religion." Likewise, school bus drivers in Kentucky have been warned that under no circumstances may they say "Merry Christmas" to kids getting on or off their buses. It's "happy holidays" or nothing.

The list of ways you can flout such PC diktats grows every year. If you live in a flat in Philadelphia, for example, you are breaking the law if you have a Christmas tree in your home - and may be subject to a $300 fine. A nursery school teacher in a chic private school in Washington, terrified that she might be accused of religious indoctrination, has temporarily removed the "t" from the letters of the alphabet that she had strung around her classroom: it looked a little too much like a cross for comfort. Schools in Scarsdale, New York - yes, that is where the diet comes from - have banned the American tradition of "candy canes", striped mint sweets in the shape of walking sticks; they could be construed as shepherds' crooks, you see, and we all know what that means at this time of the year.

Is this a sign of the new authoritarianism in America of which I have been writing in recent weeks? Between 85 and 90 per cent of Americans classify themselves as Christians and fewer than three per cent as Jews, yet the minor Jewish festival of Hanukkah is now widely accorded equality with Christmas. And on Boxing Day - unknown here, of course - Kwanzaa starts. Kwanzaa? It is a non-religious, seven-day "cultural event" for PC American blacks that first started in 1965; its founder, a man called Ron Everett who changed his name to Maulana Karenga, was a black gang leader who fought bloody battles with the Black Panthers in the sixties.

Thus "the holidays" have evolved into an uneasy melange of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa - now usually bracketed together as equally meaningful times of the year for Americans, depending on their faith, race or colour.

Though this is largely a media-led notion, it is one that is increasingly catching on across the country; if you subscribe to its tenets you risk treading a perilous tightrope trying not to give offence. Do you wish black friends "happy Kwanzaa" even though American blacks have been Christian longer than, say, white Mormons? Do you wish your Jewish neighbours "happy Hanukkah" even if you know they've not been near a synagogue for years?

The solution, therefore, becomes the simple and bland "happy holidays". Then you do not risk making racist assumptions about the person to whom you are talking and thereby subscribe to an all-American code of uniformity and equality. You are free to send "happy holidays" cards, with pictures of grinning kids with teeth-braces, to all and sundry. It has become a very American anomaly that, in a country that considers itself overwhelmingly Christian - and the large influx of Latino immigrants has strengthened rather than weakened that - it is now downright un-American to wish anyone "Happy Christmas".

The first reason for all this stems from genuine idealism over race and equality. The Founding Fathers forbade any connection between officialdom and religion; Supreme Court rulings since have made it illegal to propagate any religious faith in state schools, which is why so many teachers and their heads have become so touchy. I know of one four year old who came home from her private Anglican church school, proudly clutching some handiwork. "What is it?" asked her father. "A menorah," she replied, explaining the role light plays in the celebration of Hanukkah.

Inevitable contradictions like this arise because the idealistic wish to avoid distinctions between race and colour actually creates the opposite effect: in the America of the nineties you become more conscious of someone's racial background, so overwhelming are the mental gymnastics required to avoid causing offence. It all spirals down into self-defeating nonsense. Thus American Christians become acutely aware of Hanukkah - a festival that causes only a mild ripple in Israel - while knowing little or nothing of much more important times in the Jewish liturgical calendar like Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. And even though there are probably now more Muslims than Jews in America, Islam hardly gets a look in: PC policing has not yet caught up with that one (how would Americans cope with 30 days of fasting, I wonder?).

Finally, too, there is the explanation that nearly everything in America comes back to sooner or later: money. In the earlier part of this century, American department stores found that they could attract more commerce by switching on Christmas lights and pushing Santa at the kids. Then, as these displays became both more commercial and more secular, they realised that "the holidays" could be seen to embrace the period from before Thanksgiving right through until the new year. So the nation now goes on a materialistic binge that lasts six full weeks and generates some $37 billion each year. No wonder there is no room for religion in this, the most devout and holiest of American rituals. H---y C-------s.

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