My kids, like all Jewish children, are Christmas-obsessed. Earlier this week, we went to see the National Christmas Tree next to the White House after weeks of begging to decorate our own home for Christmas. Which is what made the following encounter at Trader Joe’s today so peculiar.

As we were leaving after we checked out, the kind cashier (shout out Keisha!) handed each of my kids a small roll of stickers. The stickers at Trader Joe’s are seasonal, and a week before Christmas, there are Santa hats on some sort of character (I wasn’t paying that close attention). My daughter, normally extremely polite, handed them back and declared “We’re not Christmas people! I don’t want Christmas stickers!”

It led to an interesting conversation about Christmas and politeness. I told her: While we don’t celebrate Christmas, most people in this country do. It’s as important to them as Passover and Rosh HaShanah is for us. When people realize we’re Jewish, they make a point of wishing us a happy holiday, and by wishing us a Merry Christmas, that’s all they’re doing: trying to wish us a happy holiday, assuming we celebrate it. And it’s a fair assumption. It doesn’t have to be right. The whole point is: they’re trying to be nice. You would never, in any other circumstance, be rude to someone just trying to be nice, and it’s not acceptable in this one.

As we finished this conversation, I opened Twitter and saw this and laughed:

People, please stop wishing me a merry Christmas. It’s wonderful if you celebrate it, but I don’t and I don’t feel like explaining that to you either. — Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) December 20, 2018

It seems some adults need the same conversation as my five-year-old. Julia, honey, you don’t have to explain it to anyone. You can just smile and say thank you. They’re just trying to be nice. It’s not that hard to reciprocate kindness. If you’re incapable, that says more about you than it does them.