So, you’re writing your Christmas card and you’re being ultra careful to get everything correct. After all, this card is going to your relatives, your friends, your boss, your coworkers, your…favorite English teacher? You’ve taken the time to get a really great photo of you and your family; you’ve made sure everything is spelled correctly; and you’ve even removed the unnecessary apostrophe from your last name. Everything is in order, correct?
Hopefully! But there may be one last thing you’ll want to check: if “merry” is inappropriately capitalized.
We see the word “merry” capitalized so often with the phrase “Merry Christmas!” that it’s easy to think that “Merry” should always be capitalized when it’s next to the word Christmas. But it shouldn’t!
Sure, you do want to capitalize “Merry” if it’s at the beginning of sentence, as you would the first word of any sentence. And if you’re using “Merry” in a title, such as the “Kris Kringle’s Merry Christmas Parade.” But if you’re just adding “merry” to a sentence, as in “We wish you a merry Christmas,” then “merry” should never, ever be capitalized. Even on a Christmas card.
Why?
Because capitalizations in English are used to designate only four things:
- Beginnings of sentences (“Holidays are wonderful.”);
- Proper nouns (“Santa Claus loves Christmas.”);
- Acronyms (“The FBI is closely tracking Rudolph’s nose”); and
- Nouns in titles (Elf: The Musical).
That’s it. Any other use of a capital letter is, technically, improper English. Plus, adding capital letters outside of those four purposes (other than for stylistic or design flare) doesn’t really make any sense.
In phrases like, “We wish you a merry Christmas” or “Have a very merry Christmas!” the word “merry” is simply an adjective. And we don’t capitalize adjectives in English. “Christmas” is capitalized because it’s a proper noun—a named holiday. But any adjective describing Christmas should not be capitalized.
That’s that case for any adjective ahead of Christmas: Have yourself a…
- wonderful Christmas.
- nice Christmas.
- pleasant Christmas.
- joyful Christmas.
- peaceful Christmas.
- memorable Christmas.
- merry Christmas.
Ah, see how wonderful that all looks?
So if you’re putting the phrase “merry Christmas” into a sentence, keep it clean and keep it lowercase. It’s merrier that way.
Now…
If you just have the phrase “Merry Christmas!” on your Christmas card, absolutely capitalize it! It’s the beginning of a sentence and it’s kind of like a title. Also, if, stylistically, you like the idea of making your entire sentence capitalized like a title, you can get away with it, but only if you follow the rules for capitalizing titles: making sure you capitalize all the nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and verbs while NOT capitalizing prepositions and articles.
If you had anything to add or holiday greeting advice to give, share it in the comments!