merry chrismukkah/happy holidays

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 15:49:19 -0500, Grant Barrett
<gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG> wrote:

>To follow-up: With two citations, it's been shown that the
>writers/creators/producers/characters on "The OC" did not coin "Merry
>Chrismukkah." We know this because the "The Best Chrismukkah Ever"
>episode first aired December 3, 2003; even given lead times on episode
>production, I doubt the scripts were done too long before that. The
>earliest cite we've found with only cursory searching is 1996. There
>are also many other cites under various spellings between 1996 and
>2003. So, either thousands of people--including writers for "The
>OC"--coined the word independently, or else it was already in
>circulation.

Also, in the late '90s there was a widely circulated piece of net-humor in
the form of a mock press release announcing the "corporate merger" of
Christmas and Hanukkah into Chrismukkah.  According to this site, the joke
began circulating in 1998:

http://www.chrismukkah.com/misc/learn_about_chrismukkah.tpl

The Usenet archive has versions of the press release back to 1999 at least
(with some variations, e.g., whether the spokesman sings "Oy, Come all Ye
Faithful" or "Oy Vey, Come all Ye Faithful").

-- Ben Zimmer