Season's Greetings, Happy Christmas, Merry Christmas, Nollaig Shona Dhuit etc

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lawred2 wrote: »

What's the difference?

Happy = sober, Merry = not sober

LordSutch

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Didn't we have this thread last week?

Its the same thread, but somebody has got into the internals and changed my thread title :cool:

Probably given it a new lease of life.

Comhrá

LordSutch wrote: »

Its the same thread, but somebody has got into the internals and changed my thread title :cool:

Probably given it a new lease of life.

Apologies LordSutch.......never spotted your earlier similar poll...:o

Peregrine

LordSutch wrote: »

Its the same thread, but somebody has got into the internals and changed my thread title :cool:

Probably given it a new lease of life.

Some pesky mod has gone and merged a new thread with this one.

LordSutch

tippman1 wrote: »

Apologies LordSutch.......never spotted your earlier similar poll...:o

The poll attached to this thread IS MY POLL.

Thats the 2nd time today that one of my thread Titles has been interfered with.

Thank you & Happy Christmas.

Peregrinus

Peregrinus wrote: »

Between the Reformation and the nineteenth century, Christmas wasn't actually a big deal in most of the English-speaking world - it was considered a bit, well, too Catholic. It revived as a significant popular holiday in the mid-nineteenth century in both Britain and the US; some people give credit for this largely to Charles Dickens, who was insanely popular in both countries, and who of course is the author of that revolting morality tale, A Christmas Carol. Prince Albert, who brought German Christmas customs to the UK and made them fashionable, was also involved in the revival of Christmas as a major holiday.

At the time "Merry Christmas" was the standard greeting on both sides of the Atlantic, but almost immediately there was a trend towards "Happy Christmas" in the UK, for the reason Deedsie points out - "merry" was considered too suggestive of shameless alcoholic debauch.

"Happy Christmas" never really took off in the US, and is still rarely heard there. Evidently, "merry" doesn't have the same alcoholic connotations in the US (or, if it does, they don't care). It did take off in Britain, but only to a limited extent. Even in British English, it has always taken second place to "Merry Christmas". So it's not really an Americanism; "Happy Christmas" occurs almost exclusively on this side of the Atlantic, but "Merry Christmas" is found on both sides.

"Happy Christmas" is characteristically Irish, though, in the sense that it has always been much more popular in Ireland than "Merry Christmas". To the extent that Hiberno-English is influenced by British English, it tends to be influenced by middle-class and upper-class varieties of British English, and this is where "Happy Christmas" particularly flourished. "Happy Christmas" was, and I think still is, the dominant greeting in Ireland - the only country in the Anglosphere, so far as I know, where this is true. It's a safe bet that the Santa poster with "Merry Christmas" on it that TOss Sweep's family had in the 1970s came from the UK.

Excellent post. This very interesting OED blog on the etymology of 'Merry Christmas' corroborates and expands it:

.... Merry Christmas is hardly a newcomer. It is actually the earlier of the two phrases by more than a century. In 1534, it is attested in the exceptionally un-jovial environs of the Tower of London, in a letter from the condemned bishop John Fisher to Henry VIII’s trusted minister Thomas Cromwell. It is difficult not to read irony in his closing lines to a man who orchestrated his imprisonment: “And thus our Lord send yow a mery Christenmas, and a comfortable to yowr hearts desyer.” More festively, the English West Country Christmas carol “We wish you a Merry Christmas” is also thought to date to the 16th century. It is tempting to give the refrain of that ubiquitous song some of the credit for the common distinction between a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Happy Christmas, then, is the interloper. Analysis of historical databases shows that, Ireland aside, Merry Christmas has always been much more common than this later phrase, which first came on the scene in the 17th century. The earliest examples of Happy Christmas refer more to joyousness at the birth of Christ than to the gaiety of the festival celebrating it, as in a 1676 reference to “The voice of truth, the Angel of peace who giving himselfe vnto us, gave the first happy Christmasse, and peace on earth to men of good will.” By the 19th century, though, as shown in Moore’s poem, Happy Christmas was typically just a synonym of Merry Christmas, and they were often used interchangeably.

However, happy got a boost in the latter part of the century, when the temperance movement, especially in England, began to emphasize a semantic distinction between Merry Christmas and Happy Christmas, with use of the former being discouraged because of its association with alcoholic revelry.

JupiterKid

A Very Merry Christmas to Everyone!