{"id":6442,"date":"2011-12-23T15:37:05","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T15:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=6442"},"modified":"2011-12-23T15:37:05","modified_gmt":"2011-12-23T15:37:05","slug":"merry-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=6442","title":{"rendered":"Merry &#038; Happy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Do you wish someone a &#8216;Merry Christmas&#8217; or a &#8216;Happy Christmas&#8217;? <\/p>\n<p>This is a question I was asked recently, and my reply was that I use both &#8211; in Christmas cards I usually use merry, but in speech I use happy. How about you?<\/p>\n<p>Would you ever with someone a Merry New Year? This doesn&#8217;t sounds quite right to me.<\/p>\n<p>Do other languages make a distinction between merriment* and happiness**?<\/p>\n<p>* participation in amusing and enjoyable activities; fun; exuberant enjoyment<\/p>\n<p>** the state of pleasurable content of mind, which results from success or the attainment of what is considered good<\/p>\n<p>Definitions from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/84070?redirectedFrom=happiness#eid\">OED<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you wish someone a &#8216;Merry Christmas&#8217; or a &#8216;Happy Christmas&#8217;? This is a question I was asked recently, and my reply was that I use both &#8211; in Christmas cards I usually use merry, but in speech I use happy. How about you? Would you ever with someone a Merry New Year? This doesn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}