The holiday season is upon us once again, so let me be among the first to say,

Happy Holidays. I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving, and a happy Halloween, too, if you consider that part of the holiday season.

Some people do, you know. And hey, if you had a birthday recently, well, then I'd like to wish you a happy Halloween, too, if you consider that part of the holiday season. Some people do, you know.

And hey, if you had a birthday recently, well, then I'd like to wish you a happy birthday.

And in just a few short weeks, I'll be wishing all of you a happy New Year.

But one thing I most certainly will not be wishing you is a happy Christmas.

That would just sound weird, wouldn't it? Happy Christmas

sounds maybe a little pretentious, at least when an American tries to say it. No, here in America,

we wish one another a Merry Christmas. And just as importantly, we don't wish one another

a merry one of anything else. In fact, with just a few unremarkable exceptions, the word merry nowadays seems to be reserved

almost exclusively for spreading holiday cheer.

Why?

Well, it's a combination of language changing over time, a bit of influence from the printing

and publishing industries, and the

story of a phrase that survived a Victorian crackdown on partying in the streets.

I'm Brian Earle. This is Christmas past.

Happy and Mary may sound interchangeable, and to a certain extent they are. They both refer to a

pleasant or joyous state of mind, but there is a subtle distinction that makes all the

difference. To make sense of it all, we're going to need the help of a linguist. I'm Erica

Ogrant and I'm a linguist. Erica writes about language for the website Mental Floss.

She's the author of the Land of Invented Languages,

and she's currently at work on a new book.

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