Hello! Hello! Hello everybody! My name is Steve Ford
and welcome to your business English lesson
this is a lesson for people who are trying to think of ideas
for writing e-mails, messages
for people that are celebrating the Holiday season
so before I give you some ideas about Holiday messages
there are some things that I wanted to explain
the first one is that merry and happy essentially mean the same thing
but usually we only use merry at Christmas time
we say Merry Christmas
so merry means to be happy
and it means that you're happy because you're drinking
and eating, (dancing, celebrating) the things that you love
and you're very giddy, very joyful
happy is used in a more general sense
like Happy New year so
that's the difference there merry is
used only in that specific case
so you wouldn't say merry birthday for example
you'd say happy birthday
the second one: dear vs hi
as you know, dear is a lot more formal
it was used all the time in written letters
some people will still use it
if they're writing a more formal e-mail
something that kind of shows respect
but here in North America we use hi most of the time
even in a greeting
if you look at sign offs
you'll see that especially at Christmas time that
..because it's so cold here
in so many parts of North America
way up in Canada
and it seems we're going to have a cold winter this year
you want to use the word warm
so you can say when you're signing of
warmly, you could also say warmest wishes
another one is using best
so you could say Best wishes
All the best, Best
and the classic sign off: we look forward to
and then you put a verb and then ing
so we look forward to doing more business with you in the new year
we look forward to collaborating with you in the new year
all of these if you're working
and you need this in your own business
or you could use this in a friendly way if this is with friends you could
say we look forward to seeing you next year
for example, but remember you have to put that ing
after to
so if you're sending a Christmas message and the people that you are sending it to are
not Christians, but maybe they happen to take that time off
you could say things like
and if it;s more for a business e-mail, you could say
now if your e-mail is directed more at people who are Christian
and celebrate Christmas
you could say the following
and this one's really nice
OK everybody, I hoped that you enjoyed the lesson
I hope that you have a wonderful Holiday season
and here's hoping that 2017 if full of prosperity
love and of course happiness
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and I look forward to our next lesson. Bye for now!