Just got back from a few days on business in London and Dublin. Both cities were festively decorated for the holidays - albeit some of the pub owners in Dublin were just putting up their Christmas decorations (a good 3 weeks after T-Giving). It provided me a laugh as I witnessed. -- Rumour here in CT was that Keith Richards who has a house in Weston CT busted up his collarbone a few years back cleaning out his gutters -- that is exactly what I was thinking when I saw this pub owner trying to put up some Xmas lights across the front of his pub -- tettering on a rickety ladder with cigarette in mouth and a bunch of the lads from the pub - pints in hand - giving pointers on how it should be done but offering no physical assistance.
London and Dubin still lag behind NY and the US catering to the retail shoppers by shutting down their stores around 6pm with a 7:30pm close on Thursdays. At night in both cities (I guess more so in Dublin) I saw tons of folks out on the town in their finery going from their company's Christmas party to their local pub in all states of inebriation. They all wished each other and sometimes to strangers on the streets "Happy Christmas!!" It struck a wrong chord to my American ear each time. Yes, we, Americans use the "Merry Christmas" over the "Happy Christmas" but think about the fact that "Merry Christmas" is all over the place in English writer Charles Dicken's Christmas Carol especially when Scrooge comes out of his hallucingenic dream while the American poem by Clement C. Moore "A Visit By St. Nick.. (Twas the Night before Christmas) ends with a "Happy Christmas to all" --- hmmm. I think after awhile of hearing this "Happy Christmas" stuff - it sounded wrong not only because I've grown up to use the "Merry" but the "Happy" seemed to diminish the holiday.
Face it - irregardless of your religious beliefs- Christmas is the Mac-Daddy of holidays - hey, I am Catholic but I honestly dont really feel that the baby born to Joseph and Mary was really God on Earth -but still Christmas is a big deal to me maybe not for the right reasons or maybe it is the right reasons of a time to be joyous and be with family and friends. So this holiday deserves its own specialized greeting like good ole "Merry" --- "Happy" seems so ordinary -- you have "Happy New Year", "Happy Birthday", "Happy Thanksgiving" , "Happy Halloween", "Happy Anniversery", even over the course of a few years I've heard "Happy 4th of July" and "Happy Groundshog Day". Christmas can't be lumped in with these ordinary and regular occassions - so lets give it the respect and admiration it deserves --- so "may all of your Christmases be Merry..."
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