It's the most wonderful time of the year! Get in the Christmas spirit with these festive and fun holiday wallpapers!
Celebrate the joy and warmth of the season with pretty Christmas wallpapers that will warm your heart and bring a smile to your face. Let this holiday season be full of magic - sharing moments with family and friends, decorating the Christmas tree, making homemade ornaments, singing carols, putting cookies out for Santa, and more! We may pray for sunshine all year long, but the moment the holiday season is here, everyone wishes for a white Christmas. There’s simply nothing better than sitting by the fire with loved ones, enjoying a mug of hot chocolate and a candy cane, red and green wrapped presents under the tree, snowflakes falling gently outside…
Find joy and happiness in this holy night! You can even spread the Christmas spirit by sharing these festive wallpapers with friends!
Merry Christmas and Happy Christmas
"Merry Christmas" and "Happy Christmas" redirect here. For other uses, see Merry Christmas (disambiguation) and Happy Christmas (disambiguation).
The greetings and farewells "merry Christmas" and "happy Christmas" are traditionally used in English-speaking countries, starting a few weeks before December 25 each year.
Variations are:
"Merry Christmas", the traditional English greeting, composed of merry (jolly, happy) and Christmas (Old English: Cristes mæsse, for Christ's Mass).
"Happy Christmas", an equivalent greeting often used in Great Britain and Ireland.
"Merry Xmas", with the "X" replacing "Christ" is sometimes used in writing, but very rarely in speech. This is in line with the traditional use of the Greek letter chi (uppercase Χ, lowercase χ), the initial letter of the word Χριστός (Christ), to refer to Christ.
These greetings and their equivalents in other languages are popular not only in countries with large Christian populations, but also in the largely non-Christian nations of China and Japan, where Christmas is celebrated primarily due to cultural influences of predominantly Christian countries. They have somewhat decreased in popularity in the United States and Canada in recent decades, but polls in 2005 indicated that they remained more popular than "happy holidays" or other alternatives.
"Merry," derived from the Old English myrige, originally meant merely "pleasant, agreeable" rather than joyous or jolly (as in the phrase "merry month of May"). Christmas has been celebrated since the 4th century AD, the first known usage of any Christmas greeting dates was in 1534. "Merry Christmas and a happy new year" (thus incorporating two greetings) was in an informal letter written by an English admiral in 1699. The same phrase is contained in the title of the English carol "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," and also appears in the first commercial Christmas card, produced by Henry Cole in England in 1843.
Also in 1843, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was published, during the mid Victorian revival of the holiday. The word "merry" was then beginning to take on its current meaning of "jovial, cheerful, jolly and outgoing.Merry Christmas" in this new context figured prominently in A Christmas Carol. The cynical Ebenezer Scrooge rudely deflects the friendly greeting: "If I could work my will … every idiot who goes about with 'merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding." After the visit from the ghosts of Christmas effects his transformation, Scrooge exclaims; "I am as merry as a school-boy. A merry Christmas to everybody!" and heartily exchanges the wish to all he meets. The instant popularity of A Christmas Carol, the Victorian era Christmas traditions it typifies, and the term's new meaning appearing in the book popularized the phrase "merry Christmas".
The alternative "happy Christmas" gained usage in the late 19th century, and in the UK and Ireland is a common spoken greeting, along with "merry Christmas.
