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December 26, 2007
The ‘Merry’ in ‘Christmas’

[Let’s open the War on Christmas 2008 right away. Don’t ever let Bill O’Reilly catch breath on the issue.
b.]

The ‘Merry’ in ‘Christmas’

by anna missed
lifted from a comment

So as I left the gas station tonight, the clerk said "Merry
Christmas". I’m not (really) sure what he was talking about. Because,
no one ever says "merry" about anything else, like have a merry time,
or merry day, or even merry holiday.

Come to think about it, I can’t
remember the last time I heard somebody say "merry" anything, except in
connection to Christmas. So I guess "merry" is suppose to only apply to
Christmas – something about Christmas is suppose to be "merry", but
nothing else qualifies in distinction, as in the sense of have a
"happy" new year, or birthday.

You might think then that "merry" in
definition is only intrinsically connected to Christmas, but no, the
dictionary definition of merry is:

  1. Full of high-spirited gaiety; jolly.
  2. Marked by or offering fun and gaiety; festive: a merry evening.
  3. Archaic. Delightful; entertaining.
  4. Brisk: a merry pace.

Not exactly anything sacred there, or special to Christmas. So
whats the deal? Why has the word merry been enslaved to exclusive usage
for one religious holiday a year, and its generic usage rendered odd,
and in spite of the fact we all know its real meaning, but yet refuse
to use it as such? And you know, you too – haven’t used the word merry
outside of Christmas now have you?

My own personal (war on the war on Christmas) conspiracy theory
about this particular minutia begins with the "war on Christmas"
propaganda started in the wingnut sphere. Supposedly, that people (of
the left wing variety) are trying to get people to stop using the
phrase "Merry Christmas" and substitute the phrase "Happy Holidays"
instead. That somehow its the liberal left that is trying to
delegitimize the sacred birth of Christ holiday.

However, according to Amish Aunt Tilly
Amish Christians do not really "celebrate" Christmas (or Santa Clause,
or trees with lights for that matter), but rather "observe" it. Which
is of course, a far cry from "Merry Christmas" in the conventional
American sense of the phrase.

Seeing that both words Merry and
Christmas, like so many other American religious observations have
evolved so far from their original ritual content and into a virtual
dead language iconographical reconstructions dedicated to totemic
commercialism – as to become devoid of secular content. And instead
have become replicated icons that people acknowledge to one another as
tacit unacknowledged but mutual subserviance to something else
altogether.

The non-negotiable American way of life. Thats what
fighting against the so called "war on Christmas" is all about – to
keep the meaningless "merry" in the the reformulated (and equally
meaningless) notion of "Christmas" intact.

Posted by b on December 26, 2007 at 13:54 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Going off on a tangent, but on the subject of meaningless phrases, be sure to have an average day.

Posted by: beq | Dec 26 2007 14:42 utc | 1

Salutation – “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year” were present in 17th century correspondence. Merry is probably of English origin and was introduced to America in Dickens time. In Moore’s poem (l822) the reader is addressed at the end with the phrase “Happy” Christmas. Merry originally meant “short (of time)”, or time is short when you are enjoying yourself.

American Xmas Origins

Posted by: catlady | Dec 26 2007 14:48 utc | 2

didn’t they crucify santa claus, and then he didn’t really die and he comes back to harrass little kids, or was that somebody else ?

Posted by: Badger | Dec 26 2007 16:42 utc | 3

I’m saving all of my energy for the War Against Groundhog’s Day.
Every year, these sacred types try to take our cherished secular holiday and strip it of its beloved, worldly ordinariness and I won’t tolerate it! I want to eat my toasted cheese sandwiches on February 2nd the same way the founding fathers ate theirs… with no pictures of the Blessed Virgin mysteriously caramelizing Herself onto them! This country was built on a solid foundation of shadow-watching marmots and semiotic-free artery-clogging junk food! If I want to wish a hapless passerby a Secular Groundhog’s Day or a Mundane Woodchuck Day, or even an Ordinary Whistlepig Appreciation Day, then I just will! I won’t put up with these dualist weirdos sanctifying everything up! They won’t be satisfied until they’ve sucked the magical irreverence out of everything that we hold profane.

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 26 2007 17:24 utc | 4

I find it incredibly insensitive to wish people a merry anthing. What about the potential for offending the bereaved or the depressed? Best to just keep your mouth shut and celebrate quietly in your own undecorated home.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Dec 26 2007 18:25 utc | 5

Over here in Ireland, being merry = being drunk
The true meaning of modern day Xmas, drunk on credit, booze, shopping, watching celebrities, latest reality show, ……..

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 26 2007 18:57 utc | 6

badger
you are confusing the easter bunny – who i think was crucified for the purposes of consumption & who was betrayed by a hen, i believe, but not knowing the literature it could have easily been an owl, for example & because all this passed in amerikay – maybe even poe’s raven
& in my understanding, which as i say is limited to the scriptures – on the third or fouth day the bunny was ressurected as one of the horses of the apocalypse – tho i momentarily forget her name
but ever since that is why we connect heroin with horses

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 26 2007 19:44 utc | 7

comrade cloned
merry – in my memory of belfast was being transcedentally drunk – that is to say – in a state of surrender – well articulated by comrade brendan behan who once sd he did not have drinking problem that interfered with his writing but that he had on the contrary a writing problem that interfered with his drinking

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 26 2007 19:47 utc | 8

Oh my. I don’t know what set that off, a kid working in a gas station saying something someone told him to say – but the comrades here have responded with properly inspired zeal, especially you r’giap – I did not know that about the easter bunny. Love you all here, in an un-merry MERRY sort of way!! LOL.

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 26 2007 20:11 utc | 9

R’Giap, truly interesting posting.
Were you in Belfast and did you meet the great Brendan Behan?
I sincerely hope you are writing a great book.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 26 2007 20:15 utc | 10

Actually, I have heard ‘merry’ used in a rather colorful (rated PG) mini-epic poem:

First, I was jumping for Joy…she was clinging from the chandelier.
Then, I was feeling Merry…so she slapped me.

There are many more lines possible, as many as the puns to be made form people’s names.

Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Dec 26 2007 20:43 utc | 11

It was said on TV the other night that there were at least 80 people(All women?) named Mary/Merry? Christmas in the US.

Posted by: R.L. | Dec 26 2007 21:46 utc | 12

badger, perhaps the bunny behaved like this

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 26 2007 23:13 utc | 13

Takes quite a bit to make me laugh these days, r’giap, but that is a funny story.

Posted by: Badger | Dec 27 2007 1:12 utc | 14

Takes quite a bit to make me laugh these days, r’giap, but that is a funny story.

Posted by: Badger | Dec 27 2007 1:12 utc | 15

anna missed,
“The non-negotiable American way of life”
In a nutshell. Or more properly, a wingnutshell.
No one I’m aware of has tried to prevent others from saying Merry Christmas. But they interpret the use of HH as an attack. Ironically, they forget the etymology of “holidays” – “holy days”.
But MC is the Brand Name. Use the proper salutation, wear the proper lapel pin. Conform. Or risk being singled out from the pack and accused of being un-American.
I’m pre-Madalyn Murray, old enough to remember being expected by my public school third-grade teacher to take my turn leading the class in the daily prayer. It was exquisitely uncomfortable for a child from a family who practiced no religion of any kind. I learned an indelible lesson about the pressure to conform, and the internal cost. And I wondered (and still do) how many of the other kids (and adults, for that matter) just parrot the words without the matching belief inside.
Fortunately the courts had the courage to buck popular sentiment and do what was right. I wouldn’t trust the Roberts Court to uphold such a ruling – it’d be 5-4 one way or the other.
The empty suit that is Mitt Romney recently said “religion requires freedom”, which is true to this extent: that when any external force compels the appearance of pious conformance it becomes even more impossible to know what a person really believes.
But that’s all any of history’s talibans require, including our current domestic version – the appearance. The conformity that removes even an implicit challenge to a set of beliefs (should they be genuinely held by those in power) or to the exercise of raw power the enforced beliefs are otherwise cynically employed to uphold.

“Because the establishment proposed by the Bill is not requisite for the support of the Christian Religion. To say that it is, is a contradiction to the Christian Religion itself, for every page of it disavows a dependence on the powers of this world: it is a contradiction to fact; for it is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them… It is moreover to weaken in those who profess this Religion a pious confidence in its innate excellence and the patronage of its Author; and to foster in those who still reject it, a suspicion that its friends are too conscious of its fallacies to trust it to its own merits.
…It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority.”
– From James Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments”

I quoted this in a letter to my Republican congressman earlier this year. A waste of time that no doubt only served to get my name on a list somewhere (assuming I’m not already so marked).
One sad example of collateral damage in the Christmas/Cultural Wars is the widespread disappearance of religious choral music from the repertoires of public school choirs. The reality is that most choral music worth singing, from Palestrina to Mozart to Tavener, is religious. And I happily sang it all, with never a moment of philosophical conflict. I no more had to be Christian to sing Handel’s Messiah than one would have to believe in Faeries to appear in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
This was possible because the neither the directors nor other students felt any need to wear their faith on their sleeves in the public school setting, even though a clear majority of them were religious. There was no prayer circle nonsense on the football field back then, either.
Now it’s an in-your-face war. We didn’t start it. And if we push back, insisting on keeping the public square neutral, then we’re “attacking faith”…

Posted by: OkieByAccident | Dec 27 2007 5:38 utc | 16

Okie,
I think what the O’Reilly crowd is trying to do with the war on Christmas is to tar the liberal faction with their typical attack, that the “no moral compass” liberals, are anti-Christian, and anti-religion and by extension anti-American. ** (as the original above should read …devoid of sectarian content” not “secular content”)** When it is actually the O’Reilly crowd themselves who have not only allowed but relish in the transformation of “Merry Christmas” in its current perversion, from being “observed” to being “celebrated” in its present incarnation. And then go further denigrating it by turning it into a right wing dog whistle political demonization fest.
I’ve long felt that they do the same thing with other intrinsic beliefs, such as the better aspects of exceptionalism, equal justice or egalitarianism – and then turn them inside out in order to inspire peoples trust, while simultaneously destroying what the trust is based upon.

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 27 2007 7:17 utc | 17

Thanks to OkieByAccident for the reference to Madison’s “Remonstrance”.
For those interested, here is a link to the entire document. Madison would clearly be subject to DHS surveillance were he writing nowadays.

Thanks also to Giap and the Nazi dog trainer for reminding us that, as Marx wrote in the opening lines of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. I feel a bit guilty about using the latter erudite reference for the well-known epigram, since I learned via Google only 5 seconds ago.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 27 2007 7:53 utc | 18

Let’s see.
I can win this war!
In my war against Christmas I’ll jump the price of gas to $3.60 a gallon with fuel oil not far behind, kill the housing market, make sure a few million homeowners face bankruptcy, out source more jobs, separate families by waging a war based upon lies, deception, and private interests, continue to pay private contractors billions with no accountability, and threaten the beseiged middle class with the Alternative Minimum Tax and do nothing to alleviate their fears!
Maybe I can threaten to invade Iran as well!
That will show ’em!

Posted by: Diogenes | Dec 27 2007 14:26 utc | 19

Let’s see.
I can win this war!
In my war against Christmas I’ll jump the price of gas to $3.60 a gallon with fuel oil not far behind, kill the housing market, make sure a few million homeowners face bankruptcy, out source more jobs, separate families by waging a war based upon lies, deception, and private interests, continue to pay private contractors billions with no accountability, and threaten the beseiged middle class with the Alternative Minimum Tax and do nothing to alleviate their fears!
Maybe I can threaten to invade Iran as well!
That will show ’em!

Posted by: Diogenes | Dec 27 2007 14:26 utc | 20

anna missed,
I definitely agree. Not dissimilar to how the administration shows their reverence for the Constitution by being careful not to wear it out through overuse.
Increasingly, MC isn’t just a greeting, much less a sincere wish for those greeted. It’s partly a challenge, the response is a test of your amurrican credentials.
Informal survey: I have 8 cards from co-workers taped to my desk. Three of them (as printed) refer specifically to “Christmas”. Three refer to “Holidays”, two just to the “Season”. They gave the same cards to everyone; that is, there was no variation based on who the recipient was.
One of the 3 “Christmas” cards talks about the “gift of faith” and the “peace of His love”. Tellingly, this one is from a person who just found religion within the last year or two. She has some religious words in her email signature block (I’ve teetered on the edge of complaining about that), and also has a new “cross” tattoo on her shoulder. “I used to get high on cheap beer. Now I get high on Jesus!” Eric Hoffer would understand.
RE the “no moral compass” issue: Last year, another co-worker (I didn’t get a card from her) loudly complained about the office dinner being advertised as a “Holiday” event rather than a “Christmas” event. Earlier the same day, she and another coworker had a conversation about the shop that was working on her car. The gist of it was that he told her she could trust this business because it was “Christian”.
Faith-based car repair. The assumption of honesty and competency. Well, we can do away with the BBB and Angie’s List. Just look for the Fish symbol!
This goes back to my comment about how, even at best, we don’t know what anyone truly believes – only what they claim to believe. And an atmosphere of tests of “right-thinking” disguised as holiday greetings has crept over the rim of the slippery slope that leads to jackboots in the night, the stoning of rape victims, and the auto-da-fe.

Posted by: OkieByAccident | Dec 27 2007 16:35 utc | 21

…The modern version of Christmas, Nissenbaum argues, began in New York in the early 19th century. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and the rich were beginning to segregate themselves in exclusive neighbourhoods. More than ever, they wanted to end wassailing, which by then exhibited overtones of class conflict.
A group of wealthy, reactionary members of the New York Historical Society launched a campaign to domesticate Christmas, Nissenbaum says. Their most powerful tool was The Night Before Christmas, a poem written in 1822 by one of the group’s members, Clement Moore.
The widely reprinted poem – with images of children snug in their beds, stockings hung by the chimney, and a reindeer-riding, chimney-squeezing, gift-bearing St. Nicholas – became the roadmap for taking Christmas from the wilds of the outdoors to the family-centred serenity of the indoors.
“That poem was the basic transformation that produced Santa Claus as we know him and Christmas as we know it,” Nissenbaum says…

…By the 1840s, the United States was in a depression and newspaper editorials began encouraging people to shop at Christmas to improve the economy. Complaints about what to buy people who have everything were already common.
Christmas as we know it – domesticated, family-centred and commercialized – was firmly in place by the 1840s…

…quotes the 4th-century Greek pagan Sophist, Libanius (writing about Saturnalia over which Christmas was superimposed to propel the propaganda): “The impulse to spend seizes everyone. He who the whole year through has taken pleasure in saving and piling up his money becomes suddenly extravagant.”

Merry Christmas all and a joyous, happy and healthy New Year

Posted by: jcairo | Dec 27 2007 22:47 utc | 22

Merry often means tipsy in Shakespeare.
It is not archaic, it is merely out of fashion.
I like it (in all its shades of meaning) and use it a lot.
Fuck O’Reilly, the Regimists, and all their familiars.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

Posted by: rjj | Dec 28 2007 0:51 utc | 23

“…The gist of it was that he told her she could trust this business because it was ‘Christian’.”
A lot of that around here; even in the yellow pages. A sure way to lose my business is to present a god card.
Where the tricksters go to hide.

Posted by: beq | Dec 28 2007 3:30 utc | 24

Where the tricksters go to hide.
and the pedophiles

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 28 2007 14:30 utc | 25

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