Why the royals never say "Merry Christmas"

Have you ever wondered where the phrase "Merry Christmas" actually comes from? After all, for most other holidays, we say "happy." In a world where "Happy Easter" and "Happy Birthday" are the norm, that "merry" part of "Merry Christmas" is unique—to say the least.

Yes!  "Happy Christmas" hasn't faded completely—it's still widely used in England. This is believed to be because "happy" took on a higher class connotation than "merry," which was associated with the rowdiness of the lower classes. The royal family adopted "Happy Christmas" as their preferred greeting, and others took note. In fact, each year, Queen Elizabeth continues to wish her citizens a "Happy Christmas," rather than a merry one.

Historians believe it might boil down to a simple grammatical lesson. "Happy" is a word that describes an inner emotional condition, while "merry" is more of a behavior descriptor—something active and maybe even raucous, e.g. making noise in a merry mood after a good drinking. Merry can be a euphemism for “drunk,” though this use was often considered vulgar in the 18th century.

As both words evolved and changed meaning over time, people slowly stopped using "merry" as its own individual word during the 18th and 19th centuries. It stuck around in common phrases like "the more, the merrier," as well as in things like Christmas songs and stories, largely due to the influence of Charles Dickens. In Charles Dickens’s 1843 classic “A Christmas Carol,” for example, Christmas is mildly merry – the characters look forward to the pleasures of their Christmas pudding – but the holiday is also meant to be a time for self-reflection and charity.  Dickens’s characters use the phrase “Merry Christmas,” as did the first Christmas card, which depicts a prosperous family framed by images of people feeding and clothing poor people. 

It's no wonder that now, when we hear "Merry Christmas," we hear something sentimental. Even the word "merry" on its own now makes us think of December 25.