Why Do We Say Merry Just for Christmas?
Happy Easter, Happy Birthday, Happy St. Patrick's Day, Happy New Year, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy
"Talk Like a Pirate Day". When we want to express good wishes for festive events, religious
or not, we go with "happy."
Except when it comes to Christmas, then we don't want you to be happy, we want you to
be merry! (Unless you're in England, which we'll get to in a moment.)
Happy and merry have similar meanings, but slightly different connotations. Happy is
an emotional condition. Merry implies some specific sorts of merrymaking behavior.
Image a gathering, a baby has just been born, the relatives all come over to meet the new
member of the family. They stand around, smiling adoringly, whispering messages of welcome
and congratulating the parents. This is a very, very happy occasion. But is it merry?
Not if no one is tipping a glass, or shaking a leg, or laughing heartily. Merry implies
a bit more active showing of the happiness, or at least some jaunty clicking of the heels.
So do we say "Merry Christmas" because we see it as some kind of party animal holiday?
If that was the case, we would say Merry New Year before we said it for Christmas, but
it doesn't work that way. The current day connotations of merry and happy were not always
the same. Merry is a much older word than happy. It originally meant just pleasant or
agreeable -- the weather could be merry, or a sound or a smell. Happy came later, formed
off the word hap, meaning luck or chance. Happy was fortunate. Maybe that's why happy
New Year originally seemed the better thing to wish on someone.
Both words changed meaning over time, and both words were used in Christmas greetings.
There was Merry Christmas AND Happy Christmas. For other holidays "Merry" was less frequent
than "happy," but it did show up for "Merry Shrovetide," which is Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday,
and definitely goes along with the drinking, dancing, carousing sense of merry.
Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries the independent use of "merry" went into decline,
but stuck around in set phrases like "make merry," "the more the merrier" and, of course,
"Merry Christmas." People did say "Happy Christmas" during this time, but "Merry Christmas" was
the phrase of choice in Dickens and in carols and other things that became part of the ideal
image of Victorian Christmas. Because this was the era that came to define our Christmas
customs, the pull of merry grew stronger, even changing the last line of "The Night
Before Christmas" which originally went "A Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night."
That started to not sound right, so we changed it.
In America anyway. In England, they are fine with Happy Christmas and use it all the time.
Why did the change happen there but not here? It seems that somehow during the years of
flux between happy and merry in the 19th century, happy took on a more high-class sheen. "Merry"
was for rowdy carolers and rough Dickens characters. It had, in the words of one concerned critic
"a ridiculous excess of sentiment" while Happy was sober and sedate. "Happy Christmas" became
the preferred term of the royals. In the first ever Christmas radio address King George V
used happy. Making it clear that that was the well-bred, royally approved choice.
Less concerned with that kind of thing, we stuck with the rowdy, sentimental Merry. So
tightly connected to Christmas is this word now that it seems downright odd to apply it
to any other occasion, even one that's a raucous good time. "Merry 21st Birthday!" ? Hmm. That
could only mean a party that's decked out in green and red, sparkly cookies and a punch
bowl filled with eggnog.