In general, “Happy Holidays” is accepted as the broadest and most inclusive greeting at this time of year. If you know someone celebrates Christmas you can go with “Merry Christmas,” but 'tis the season for interacting with strangers (selling to them, buying from them, bumping into them on your way out of Target).
6: Abbreviating Christmas as "Xmas" is SacrilegiousA secular X. An impersonal, present-and-Santa-seeking X. But if we take a closer look, writing "Xmas" isn't a necessarily a slam against the son of God. Far from it.
merry, blithe, jocund, jovial, jolly mean showing high spirits or lightheartedness. merry suggests cheerful, joyous, uninhibited enjoyment of frolic or festivity. a merry group of revelers blithe suggests carefree, innocent, or even heedless gaiety.
The basics
- Merry Christmas.
- Happy Hanukkah.
- Joyous Kwanzaa.
- Yuletide Greetings.
- Happy holidays.
- Joyeux Noël.
- Feliz Navidad.
- Seasons Greetings.
Xmas (also X-mas) is a common abbreviation of the word Christmas. The "X" comes from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the Greek word Christós (Greek: Χριστός), which became Christ in English. The suffix -mas is from the Latin-derived Old English word for Mass.
Originally Answered: When should we start saying "Merry Christmas"? Traditionally, it's anytime after Advent starts — the four-week period of fasting before Christmas Day. That means after Advent Sunday, which falls on 27 Nov. to 3 Dec. depending on the year.
The default term seems to have been “Merry Christmas,” as in the old carol “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” In the 17th century, Christmas was neither merry nor happy – it was illegal. Puritans in England and in America banned the holiday as licentious, a non-biblical holdover from pagan times.
Jo wakes up first on Christmas morning, disappointed there are no presents. Then she remembers their talk with Marmee and looks under her pillow. She finds a little red book. Each of them has a copy of the same book under their pillow – Meg's is green, Amy's blue, and Beth's gray.
On Christmas morning, the girls wake to find books under their pillows. Jo and Meg go downstairs to find Marmee, but the family servant, Hannah, tells her that Marmee has gone to aid poor neighbors. When Marmee returns, she asks her daughters to give their delicious Christmas breakfast to the starving Hummel family.
Hannah explains that a poor woman came to the door begging and Mrs. March has gone to see what she needs. Meg prepares a basket containing the little presents the girls bought for Marmee the night before. Amy has disappeared, taking her present, a small bottle of cologne, with her.
About A Merry ChristmasA Merry Christmas collects the treasured holiday tales of Louisa May Alcott, from the dearly familiar Yuletide benevolence of Marmee and her “little women” to the timeless “What Love Can Do,” wherein the residents of a boarding house come together to make a lovely Christmas for two poor girls.
Families in literature: the March sisters in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. The house is big enough, though shabby, for the family has been genteelly poor since Mr March lost all his money in an unwise loan to a friend; moreover he has volunteered as a chaplain in the Civil War, and is far away in camp.
Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol opened up a market for Christmas stories which years later, the ever-practical Louisa was happy to fill (at an average price of $100 per story, I can see why!).
Islam is the only faith (other than Christianity) that makes it mandatory for its followers to believe in the truth and divine mission of Jesus. If saying “Merry Christmas” implies belief in Jesus's status as son of God, the same would apply to many other things e.g. saying 'Goodbye'.
The word "mas" is part of the word "Christmas". "Xmas” is a common abbreviation of the word “Christmas”. The “-mas” part is from the Latin-derived Old English word for “Mass”, while the “X” comes from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the Greek word Χριστός, translated as “Christ”.
It is common to send cards saying "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" any time after Thanksgiving to just before Christmas.
Saying "Merii Kurisumasu" (Merry Christmas)Because the holiday is not native to Japan, there is no Japanese phrase for "Merry Christmas." Instead, people in Japan use the English phrase, pronounced with a Japanese inflection: Merii Kurisumasu.
So, that's “holiday,” but what about “happy holidays?” Contrary to popular belief, using “happy holidays” in United States goes back to as early as the 1840s. Peruse some historic newspapers and you'll get a sense of how far back it actually goes.
A: You can find “merry Christmas” and “happy Christmas” in both the US and the UK, though Christmas is more often “merry” in American English and “happy” in British English.
— Christmas is also known on paper as XMAS. But some people just don't agree with the spelling of the holiday. They believe it takes the Christ out of Christmas, saying it's a modern and disrespectful abbreviation that focuses on the commercialization of this Christian holiday.
Christmas is on Dec. Dec. 25 is not the date mentioned in the Bible as the day of Jesus's birth; the Bible is actually silent on the day or the time of year when Mary was said to have given birth to him in Bethlehem. The earliest Christians did not celebrate his birth.
The Roman Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus dated Jesus' conception to March 25 (the same date upon which he held that the world was created), which, after nine months in his mother's womb, would result in a December 25 birth.
In the Greek alphabet, X is the symbol for the letter 'chi. In the early days of the Christian church, Christians used the letter X as a secret symbol to indicate their membership in the church to others. If you know the Greek meaning of X, Xmas and Christmas essentially mean the same thing: Christ + mas = Christmas.
