Merry Christmas a few different ways

My apologies for the long absence.  Things have been fairly crazy with the lead up to the ‘silly season’ and I have admittedly been listening to more Christmas music than is probably healthy.  However, this time only comes once a year, so I hope it’s permissible.

asian-santaI thought it would be a nice idea to wish you all a belated but very Merry Christmas in a few different languages.  Although there are a lot of countries and cultures that don’t celebrate the birth of Christ, a lot of them still have a celebration at this time of year, or a greeting to encapsulate the goodwill of the season.  From a quick glance at the internet, though, it seems like a lot of the lists are directly copied from one another, without any sort of individual research for confirmation of the translations.  So, I will just use a few that I know from personal or anecdotal experience to be fairly accurate.

So, from all of us at LT, we hope you had a very Happy Christmas (UK), 圣诞快乐 Shèng dàn kuài lè (Mandarin Chinese), Joyeux Noël (French), Feliz Navidad (Spanish), Feliz Natal (Portuguese), and the wonderful transliterations Meri Kirihimete (NZ Maori), Mele Kalikimaka (Hawaiian), and Merii Kurisumasu (Japanese).

Happy New Year, and all the best for 2009!