Christmas Mysteries

[steepholm]

My understanding had always been that the British were more likely to say "Merry Christmas" than "Happy Christmas", but that it was the other way around in the States, and that under American influence the H word was gaining currency here too. However, an Ngram of British written usage suggests that Merry is not only maintaining but increasing its ascendancy, at least in published sources:



More than that, Merry is even more dominant in the States, and always has been.



So there you go. Live and learn.

However, now I'm intrigued by the 20-year decline in American festive greetings from the early '40s to the early '60s - an era I think of as the epitome of the chestnuts-on-an-open-fire, ultra-wholesome American Christmas, with Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Jimmy Stewart, 34th St and all. Yet the number of Christmas greetings (at least in print) more or less halved in that period. Perhaps the association between Christmas trees and the Red Flag brought the festival under suspicion with the McCarthyites?

Comments

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard "Happy Christmas" in my life until I started hanging around with Irish-from-Ireland. I always thought "merry" was American and "happy" British and Irish.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Well, it looks like you were largely right! (And I was wrong...) I suspect I was misled by "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", that rather wassail-y West Country carol.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

A common song in American caroling also.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

I've just accidentally replied to this on DW! But if two replies are permissable: I think the n-gram only surveys published books - and people reporting (fictional,mostly?) greetings in books might be being ironic, as in "it was far from a merry Christmas that year". Or were editions of A Christmas Carol suddenly bumping up the numbers?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, it's a very rough-and-ready picture. One would need to factor in quite a few considerations before using Ngram as a serious research tool - but it's a very cool one, all the same!

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

Yes, great fun! :) and good for knowing when something was in use. I'm often surprised by how early some expression was.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I first heard "Happy Christmas" in England. Never in the US. Here in New York we always said "Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah" and also "Happy New Year." "Merry" here always feels like a Christmasy word: "Merry gentlemen," as we heard the carol.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It was a long time before I realised there was a significant comma between the 'merry' and the 'gentlemen'! But yes, taking my cue from that song I always attempted to shift gracefully from merriness to happiness as the last week of December wore on. By Epiphany I was positively beatific.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Though having said that, it seems that Dickens put the comma elsewhere:

The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with
a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of

"God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!"

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Interesting! Difference between "God bless you" and "God rest ye merry"? Spellcheck on my iPhone wants to capitalize "merry", as though it will only appear as the first word of a greeting.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Spellcheck on my iPhone wants to capitalize "merry", as though it will only appear as the first word of a greeting.

Or perhaps as a shortening of Meriadoc? :)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the association between Christmas trees and the Red Flag brought the festival under suspicion with the McCarthyites?

If you mean that the tune of "The Red Flag" is the same as that of "O Christmas Tree," I can say a definitive no. There's probably not one American in ten thousand who has any idea what the tune of "The Red Flag" is, even if they've ever heard of the song at all. It certainly surprised the heck out of me.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Probably about as surprised as I was to hear Americans singing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" to the tune of the British national anthem!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

When we were doing enforced patriotic songs in grammar school, that song (its official title is "America", which is rather indistinct) was one of the most popular after "The Star-Spangled Banner", along with "America the Beautiful" (which is the one that goes, "Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain ...")

I think knowledge that the tune of "America" coincides with that of "God Save the Queen" is not tremendously widespread in the US either, though we certainly encounter the British national anthem over here a tremendously lot more often than we hear socialists singing "The Red Flag", that's for sure.

What's almost as obscure here as "The Red Flag", though not quite so much, because cheeky buggers like me like to sing it in place of "The Star-Spangled Banner", is "To Anacreon in Heaven".

[aryky.livejournal.com]

I always assumed "Happy Christmas" was British because of the John Lennon/Yoko Ono song. Maybe it's actually Japanese?

I would also agree with kalimac that "America" is really, really popular in American elementary schools. Actually, given the difficulties of singing the national anthem, I would say that "America" and "America the Beautiful" were more popular than "The Star-Spangled Banner." Probably "This Land is Your Land" was too.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Well, as you can see, Merry has always been more popular in the UK too, but of course it's less noticeable if that's what you're used to.

Why is the SSB 'difficult'?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The SSB is difficult because the tune is almost impossible to sing. Somewhere on YouTube there are probably collections of assorted pop singers massacring it prior to sporting events, which, outside of schools, is probably 90% of where it gets sung.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

kalimac is right. In particular, I think it's notorious for having a very difficult range, such that if you start out singing high enough for it to be comfortable, by the end you will have gone through a stage of having to hit a note that is impossible for most of us.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

I actually really like SSB, but that high note at the end is brutal. Nobody wants to hear a bunch of primary school kids screeching that out. ;)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

We would never, ever have sung "This Land is Your Land" as the patriotic song of the day in my schooldays. That was in the 60s, which was still too close to the McCarthy era, and Guthrie was considered unAmerican.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

I had the sense from reading your comments on steepholm's LJ that you were in fact noticeably older than I, but I didn't want to bring it up because the memories were vague rather than specific and therefore I could have been wrong. But it is interesting that there's been so much continuity that a couple of decades later those two songs were still the most popular!

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have only EVER heard 'happy Christmas' in America from people who were trying to sound British.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Well, this is all news to me!

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

I realise in retrospect I did not word that at all clearly! It should have been "in America, I have only ever heard it..." Because I have heard it in England, but if this matters at all, mostly in the North.

(Even English speakers in Wales, or at least in Ceredigion, usually seem to say Nadolig Llawen, so I am not sure what the English convention would be here.)

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I will try to remember to listen out for people wishing a happy/merry Christmas in English and see which they use. But as you say, I've never heard anything other than Nadolig Llawen in Welsh.

I tend to say "Happy Christmas", but I am originally from Manchester, so that fits with you thinking that it's more northern English.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

This Mancunian says Happy Christmas. Of course it leaves you searching for a variation if you wish to move on to felicitations for the New Year; I seem to remember "a prosperous New Year" doing the rounds a few years ago, but it sounds rather mercenary. But the Swedes just say "God jul och gott nytt år" so maybe a different adjective is unnecessarily fussy.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

"A prosperous New Year" sounds suspiciously Chinese (the most common way of offering New Year's wishes during the Spring Festival in Chinese is "gong xi fa cai" in Mandarin/"gong hey fat choy" in Cantonese, which is basically wishing a prosperous New Year - so yet another example where cultural norms about what's appropriate differ. "Xin nian kuai le" (happy New Year) is also okay but not quite as common.).

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

To be honest, unless you're writing a seasonal song that's trying to cover all bases, you don't normally use them both at once in conversation. If it's Christmas Day (the only time we actually said "Happy Christmas", you've not yet reached New Year and if it is New Year, you've missed the boat as far as Christmas is concerned. :)

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall one of my older brothers trying to convince me that Brits not only said "Happy Christmas" (which seemed most unnatural), but also "Merry Birthday." But I may have made this up. I don't think he fooled me (if it really happened), because I knew about "Many happy returns" from Winnie-the-Pooh.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

'Many happy returns' is a whole new can of worms...