‘Happy Holidays’ Google Doodle Celebrates Season

Christmas Eve is finally here, and once again search giant Google is getting in the holiday spirit, celebrating the season with an original colorful doodle wishing everyone "Happy Holidays."

Appearing on Google's homepage, the 2012 happy holidays doodle portrays a parade of festive toys jubilantly marching through a snow-laden cityscape of children's blocks, Legos and other bric-a-brac. The grand master leads the troupe of music playing toys through the streets ringing in the season. Block letters spell out the word "Google" in the background in a "Toy-Story"-esque nod to the Hollywood sign. When a user hovers their cursor over the image the words "Happy Holidays" appear.

Google has celebrated the holiday season by wishing users happy holidays with a pre-Christmas doodle for over 10 years now. With its quaint, storybook quality, 2012's doodle is a nice change of pace. Last year's doodle was a combination of holiday symbols such as snowflakes, Santa Claus, bells, a snow man, candles and a gift box emblazoned on a dark background representing a cold night sky.

Google's 2012 Happy Holidays doodle can't top last year's "let it snow," feature though. For 2011, if you typed "let it snow" into the search bar, flurries of fluffy snow would begin to fall from the top of the screen. Google then allowed you to brush the snowfall away with the swipe of your cursor, just as you would wipe off a car's window. Sadly, Google deactivated the feature shortly after the company launched it.

But while Google may have ditched the "let it snow" feature, the company is obviously still trying ot keep the holiday spirit alive in other ways. If you search Google for Christmas related searches you will notice the Christmas Decorations adoring on the results pages.

As thenewstribe.com notes, in the U.S., use of the phrase "Happy Holidays" to replace "Merry Christmas," dates back to at least the 1970s and has been a common phrase relating to the Christmas season since at least the 1890s. The saying may have gained popularity from the Irving Berlin song, "Happy Holidays," which was released in 1942 and was included in the film, "Holiday Inn."