Has Anyone Here Renamed the Christmas Tree the Merry Tree?

My family celebrates Solstice with a wicker tree and a film.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323808/

http://britishfood.about.com/od/festivecooking/tp/thnksgvng.htm

Thanksgiving isn't a celebration in the UK - the nearest equivalent is Harvest Festival where we give our thanks for food and the years' harvest. With so many Americans living in the UK and the close alliance this country feels for its American cousins, Thanksgiving in the UK is certainly gaining momentum.

A surprising number of restaurants around the country serve a Thanksgiving dinner and there are a number of festivals taking place.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/26/britain-thanksgiving_n_6225622.html

LONDON (AP) — Plump turkeys in butcher shop windows. Harvest displays of pumpkin and corn. Sandwich boards describing groaning feasts.

Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in Britain, but you might be forgiven for being fooled. It's not hard to find someone to talk turkey, never mind sell you one. That's because there are so many Americans in Britain these days that dozens of businesses have started selling the goods they need to celebrate.

Greg Klaes, a Detroit native who used to teach science on U.S. military base schools, started growing pumpkins 30 years ago so his students could carve Halloween jack-o-lanterns. This year, his Oxfordshire farm is selling 600 kilograms (1,322 pounds) a week, filling harvest decorations and pumpkin pies.
And since there's no other holiday that's quite like Thanksgiving, businesses big and small are finding ways to get in on the celebrations. Dozens of restaurants are putting on spreads. Texas-based Whole Foods has turned its store on Kensington High Street into a one-stop holiday shopping center beginning with a sidewalk chalkboard that welcomes customers with the message "We are here to make your Thanksgiving epic."

Even the mainstream British grocery chain Waitrose is getting involved, although in a smaller way. A few blocks down the High Street in a store that's already decked out with red-and-green Christmas decorations, Waitrose has a small "Happy Thanksgiving" display, complete with a picture of a pumpkin wearing a buckled Pilgrim hat.
Britain doesn't really have a holiday like Thanksgiving. There are harvest celebrations, but no single event compares to the mammoth festival of food and football that dominates American thought. Britons know about it, though, and in a world of multinational companies, they will expect their colleagues to be away on Thursday.

"I'm personally quite envious of your Thanksgiving." Joy said. "It's about family and friends. It's all about being proud to be an American. It's all about not giving presents, but it's about your presence. It's about being there and being part of a family."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10480219/A-British-guide-to-Thanksgiving.html

What is Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is celebrated in the United States following the traditions of the first Pilgrims and Puritans at Plymouth (Massachusetts) who, legend has it, were thankful for a good harvest in 1621.
Historically, Thanksgiving has its roots in harvest festivals and days of religious worship, and Canadians celebrate a separate Thanksgiving also drawing upon these origins a little earlier in the year

Can I celebrate it in the UK?
Yes, it’s becoming increasingly fashionable for restaurants and pop-ups to host Thanksgiving meals. Try Joe Allen in Covent Garden, London or Gordon Ramsey's The Narrow in Islington.

Do we have our own equivalent?
Yes, it's called Harvest Day, although it's a lot less of a big deal. While we usually take a few cans of food down to our local church, Thanksgiving in North America is a much more plentiful and extravagent affair.


http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_festival

The Pagans do want their old religion back.
In Odense, Denmark there is a burial place for the ones believing in the old Nordic Gods.
They want to live from food from the Nordic countries and live in harmony with nature.
They want good care for the old people. No ättestupa now a days of course - that was the way of caring for the old in those days.
voluntarily... or maybe sometimes not so voluntarily, old people walked to a high cliff, the ättestupa, and throw themselves off the edge (according to the myth...
And they do want their Holidays back.
They do prefer a Volvo to a Vikingship.

I am not hearing about any trend of renaming the Christmas tree the Merry tree....does anyone have any information on that?

Now that you have given me the idea Hawkeye, I think I go along.

You are doing a great popularizing this idea,

Well, they are called Tannenbäume" ("fir trees") like in the old winter song Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine Blätter ("Oh fir tree, oh fir tree, ...."). (The lyrics are origianally from the 16th century)

1820 version:


I have no idea why the English version isn't a translation.

I did some searching, but came up empty.
If it's a trend, it's a damn quiet one.

Some friends of mine have a Solstice Tree. I have also heard of people having Hanukkah Bushes

The phrase "Merry Tree" invokes Christmas. The word "Merry" is almost always followed by the word "Christmas". I can't imagine using this phrase if my goal was to avoid the word "Christmas".

Have yourself a merry little conifer
May your bark be light
With a broom
Sweep fallen needles out of sight

This reads like a publicity handout for the UK tourist and turkey industries designed to be read by US tourists.

Well, it is an US-website.

I must agree with Izzy on this one. At school, once a year, we sang "we plough the fields and scatter" until we were old enough to mime and look out of the window instead.
For Harvest Festival, my mum would pack me off to school with a tin of peaches or corned beef etc.
These tins would be taken from the school to the local church, where they would be put on display round the altar for a few days, along with lots of fake raffia grass and cut flowers.
The tins of stuff would then be taken to an old peoples home and nothing more would be heard until "we plough the fields and scatter" came around again.
Not so much a festival, more a five minute sing song for some obscure reason, and a quick whip round for tins.

As far as Buterflynet's long link re.all the supposed goings on in the UK re. Thanksgiving is concerned, I would love to know where all this stuff happened, as I saw absolutely no evidence of Thanksgiving here at all. Zilch. Nothing on telly, apart from the filmed riots by greedy people at black friday events, but no thanksgiving stuff at all.
I'm sure the spokespeople are either marketing guys or as someone else said, tourism spin doctors.

How many of you over there celebrated Bonfire Night?

Exactly.

It's like me finding a link to show you how it's catching on over there, and telling you that I'm therefore right.
Izzy and others, including me, are just saying it isn't so re. Thanksgiving, that's all.
A Waitrose, possibly in a posh area near to the American Embassy probably put on a token display to possibly sell some stuff to American customers. Waitrose is a supermarket chain one step down from Harrods.....ordinary people can't afford to do their big shop there.

As far as the turkey guy is concerned, if that was me I would tell the press that the locals swear allegience to the stars and stripes every morning if it helped me sell more turkeys.

This time of year, we have bonfire night in November, and Christmas which runs right through to New Years day.
That's all, folks.

And they're all bloody American news outlets. Does any of it happen outside London?

Some people will believe anything. And they'd rather listen to that which reinforces their preconceptions, than people who actually live here.

I would refine that to inner London, and even then only a selected handful of places, possibly.

I live and travel round London north of the river, and saw not a single sign.
I saw loads of Christmas trees twinkling in people's living rooms from as early as mid November (shudder), but nothing else.

I suppose next we'll be celebrating groundhog day.

I was thinking that too, it is a way to very subtly call it a Christmas Tree, while acting like you are full of empathy for non Christians.

The woman in question comes from a very religious family in Kansas.

I suppose next we'll be celebrating groundhog day.



Wait a minute.......

London is Britain for many Yanks. Americans who come to live in the UK often tell of their frustration at their friends and relatives back home who say "Hiram lives in London" or "How are things in London?" etc when actually they live in Middlesbrough or Devizes.