Fwd: "Merry Christmas"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

Begin forwarded message:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Arnold M. Zwicky [mailto:zwicky at csli.stanford.edu]
>> Sent: Sunday, December 26, 2004 9:52 AM
>> To: dave at wilton.net
>> Subject: Re: "Merry Christmas"
>>
>> On Dec 25, 2004, at 7:50 PM, Dave Wilton wrote:
>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On
>>>> Behalf
>>>> Of Barbara Need
>>>> Sent: Saturday, December 25, 2004 6:54 PM
>>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>> Subject: Re: "Merry Christmas"
>>>>
>>>> I asked a Brit today about this and he reports that Happy Christmas
>>>> is a recent phenomenon in England, within the last 20 years. He said
>>>> that it was a reaction to the association between _merry_ and
>>>> drinking and people didn't want Christmas connected to drinking.
>>>
>>> There is a wonderful 1973 British children's book by Raymond Briggs
>>> titled
>>> "Father Christmas," that details the Christmas Eve activities of the
>>> title
>>> character. It's an illustrated book, comic-book style with few words,
>>> but
>>> what few words there are include Father Christmas saying "Happy
>>> Christmas"
>>> to various pets. This puts the usage back at least 30 years.
>>>
>>> (BTW, I highly recommend the book for adults and children alike. It's
>>> great
>>> fun and was a staple of our holiday coffee table growing up.)
>>
>> last things first.  i second the recommendation of briggs's Father
>> Christmas (it's still in print), and many other briggs books as well,
>> especially the delightfully disgusting Fungus the Bogeyman and the
>> story of his parents' lives, Ethel and Ernest: A True Story.  all his
>> books are charming and wonderfully humane (but not irritatingly
>> sentimental).
>>
>> but back to "merry/happy Christmas" in the u.k.  when i lived for some
>> periods in the u.k. (1973 in edinburgh, 1976 and 1977 in brighton), i
>> heard "merry" as well as "happy", but my british acquaintances all
>> seemed to think that "merry" was an americanism, which was creeping
>> into british usage.  meanwhile, my experience was that i heard "happy"
>> only from british speakers (or perhaps from americans aping the
>> english).  interesting to hear wilson gray's report of at least some
>> americans with "happy" (which he tries to correct).
>>
>> it's of course entirely possible that british usage has shifted,
>> possibly several times; in the past fifty years, it would have been
>> possible for the dominant british usage to go from "happy" to "merry"
>> (under american influence) and then back to "happy" (for whatever
>> reasons; i'm dubious of barbara need's informant's hypothesis).  and
>> for the still earlier (18th/19th century) preference, it could have
>> been for "merry", a la jane austen as reported on by jon lighter (also
>> sir walter scott: "We'll keep our Christmas merry still" (Marmion,
>> 1808)), which would explain why the u.s. came to be predominantly
>> "merry".
>>
>> and we shouldn't forget that british usage might well have been (and
>> still be) divided by region, class, etc. (as well as, according to my
>> speculation, age).
>>
>> some summary: (1) "merry" seems to be venerable (note jon lighter's
>> 1565 cite); (2) "happy" is still frequent (ca. 859,000 raw google web
>> hits for "happy Christmas", heavy on u.k. sites, notably
>> happychristmas.com -- as against ca. 5,830,000 raw hits for "merry
>> Christmas"); (3) "happy" is, these days, the default adjective in
>> well-wishings, so there's always some pressure to regularize "merry"
>> in
>> "merry Christmas" to "happy", and in any case "happy" (like "joyous",
>> "delightful", "pleasant", etc.) is always available for fresh, literal
>> phrasings, while the now-rare adjective "merry" is part of a formula
>> (i
>> have no idea how long "happy" has been the default adjective in
>> well-wishings, or what things were like when "merry" still had a rich
>> life outside of various fixed expressions).
>>
>> (when i stumbled on to this topic, i thought that something as
>> generally noticeable as "happy/merry Christmas" would have been well
>> studied.  or at least written about by journalists during the holiday
>> season -- a nice bit of fluff on a slow news day.  but it seems that
>> there's a lot we don't know.)
>>
>> as for barbara need's (hedged) recollection that she's heard A Visit
>> from St. Nicholas (1823) recited (by americans, presumably) with
>> "merry" instead of the textually correct "happy": i'm *sure* i've
>> heard
>> this, many times.  note: in *recitation*, not reading.  i assume this
>> is just the familiar tendency of people to "fix" quotations to make
>> them conform to the speakers' own varieties.  you don't often hear
>> "all
>> that glisters..." or "once more unto the breach", now do you?
>>
>> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>>
>>
>>
>>
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