Former President Donald Trump during an interview on Newsmax in which he claimed he brought back the use of the phrase “merry Christmas”
(Picture: screengrab)Former US president Donald Trump reckons that the American people only began to say “merry Christmas” again when he was running the country.
On Thursday, Trump spoke to former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee about the holiday greeting and how it (apparently) resurged when he took office.
In an interview that aired on the conservative news outlet Newsmax, Huckabee, one of Trump’s Republican presidential primary opponents in 2016, claimed that the nation went through “a long period where people quit saying merry Christmas” (with absolutely no evidence attached to this statement).
“It was all Happy Holiday. You deliberately changed that and openly said merry Christmas. We’re going to say it again,” he said.
Trump responded by saying that this was a part of his campaign and that, before he came along, it had been “embarrassing for stores” to say the phrase.
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He gloated: “The country had started with this ‘woke,’ I guess, a little bit before that. And it was embarrassing for stores to say ‘merry Christmas.’ You’d see these big chains, they want your money, but they don’t want to say ‘merry Christmas.’ And they’d use reds, and they’d use whites and snow, but they wouldn’t say ‘[merry] Christmas.’”
Trump didn’t stop there and further claimed that, when he began to campaign to become president in 2015, “people would say merry Christmas again.”
“That was a big part of what I was doing. I would say it all the time during that period...we brought it back very quickly,” he said.
Huckabee – clearly not content with the amount of praise he’d already given to Trump – agreed that the former president “really did” bring the phrase back and went on to say that the phrase was “simply a celebration of what America does at Christmas.”
this is incredible pic.twitter.com/JhYHKjehY6
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 16, 2021
As the conversation took place, stock image video of a Christmas tree decorated with various ornaments including one featuring Be Best – seemingly paying tribute to first lady Melania Trump’s initiative focused on online safety and overall wellbeing of children across the US – was played on screen.
People on Twitter thought the congratulatory conversation between the two was all rather hilarious.
Check out the reactions below...
Stores don’t say merry Christmas? WTF is he talking about? Seriously where’s this coming from?
— A yoSemite in the Desert (@Desert_yoSemite) December 16, 2021
They balk at Seasons Greetings and Happy Holidays because they assert an entitlement to impose that EVERYONE must celebrate Christmas and nothing else. No one was "afraid" to say Merry Christmas, they were merely accommodating everyone during the holiday season.
— Denny Utter (@dennyutter) December 16, 2021
Look who was “woke” in 2010 pic.twitter.com/r4MCNGOtYe
— 🤌🏼 Johnny Salami 🤌🏼 (@Mott_and_Hester) December 16, 2021
Is this the cold open for this week’s SNL?
— Bridget B (@BridgetinPgh) December 16, 2021
WTF did I just watch?
— Hamish Mitchell (@H_MitchellPhoto) December 16, 2021
The idea of there being a so-called “War on Christmas” stems from a notion that Bill O’Reilly, a former Fox News host, popularised on the air in 2004. Many conservative commentators have since clung on to the campaign.
But former president Barack Obama regularly wished the nation a merry Christmas while in office. Trump was also tweeting out the phrase “Happy Holidays” to his supporters around that same time.
And, of course, Trump has provided absolutely no evidence to back up his claim that he influenced the amount of people saying Happy Christmas.
Still, why let the facts get in the way of a good story eh, Trump?
Indy100 reached out to Trump’s office for further comment.
