We wish you a merry christmas

Most of us may have listened to one of the best-known Christmas songs like Jingle Bells, We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Both of the songs have been popular every year around the Christmas time. Indeed, the most common question we have received is “Can you provide the Christmas song lyrics in pinyin?” So, we have created the Christmas songs in Chinese characters and pinyin. Those who are a fan of Chinese language and Christmas melody can take this as a good taste.

In the previous post, we learned about the history and the author of the song “Jingle Bells.” Today, we will take a look at another popular Christmas song, widely enjoyed by people in China - "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".

The Christmas song can trace its history back to England in the 16^th century, when it enjoyed a high popularity during Christmas time. We know the lyrics of this song include “Oh, bring us a figgy pudding and bring it fight here.” So, why is the figgy pudding appear in the lyrics and not other things? It is said that in the English tradition, wealthy people of the country used to give Christmas treats the poor on Christmas Eve, such as figgy puddings that were very much like modern-day Christmas puddings. Since this, the figgy budding is reflected by the author and composer of the “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” song.

Over the years, however, the fashion for figgy puddings mentioned in “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” has faded. And people nowadays don’t even think about the delicious figgy pudding on Christmas seasons. But it didn’t stop people from loving this song. Have you ever listened to the song in Chinese version, which is also a good resource to learn basic Chinese with pinyin pronunciation? Give it a hum!

Is it an idiom?

Idioms are usually four-character phrases that tell a special meaning. Because most idioms either come from folk stories or legend stories, people are familiar them. These days, however, a lot of seemingly weird “idioms” spring up from the Internet.

When we first heard phrases like喜大普奔, we can’t even guess its meaning it until we see the explanations. For example, 不明觉厉 (bù mǐng juě lì) is made up by the first characters of four Chinese idioms, which is 喜闻乐见 (xǐ wěn lè jiàn), 大快人心 (dà kuài rén xīn), 普天同庆(pǔ tiān tǒng qìng), 奔走相告(bēn zǒu xiāng gào). So, the meaning of this weird idiom喜大普奔 is actually a combination of the four idioms: the news is so exhilarating that everyone is celebrating and spreading it to the rest of the world. We can use this popular “idiom” in the following example: “告诉你一个喜大普奔的消息吧, 期末考试取消了！”, which means “Here is news for celebration: The final examination is canceled!”

So much so, this is not a word that you Chinese tutor will choose to teach you in class, because this is an Internet word, which many people think that it should only be used for fun instead of in formal occasions. To those of you who are reading this post, maybe you may regard this as a way to have fun. Maybe we can also understand a thing from this language phenomenon that: language is always changing as culture changes and that we should keep up with times.